University of Iowa

Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations

Summer 2011

Raising all boats? An examination of claims that the International Baccalaureate diploma program is good for all Ryan Patrick O'Connor University of Iowa

Copyright 2011 Ryan O'Connor This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1166 Recommended Citation O'Connor, Ryan Patrick. "Raising all boats? An examination of claims that the International Baccalaureate diploma program is good for all." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2011. http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1166.

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RAISING ALL BOATS? AN EXAMINATION OF CLAIMS THAT THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE DIPLOMA PROGRAM IS GOOD FOR ALL

by Ryan Patrick O'Connor

An Abstract Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa July 2011 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Scott McNabb

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ABSTRACT The International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma program has been one of the fastest growing accelerated learning programs in recent years. At the high school level, the program offers a focus on critical thinking, combined with the accountability of external assessments of student performance. A significant portion of the program’s growth is attributed to its effective marketing, presenting itself as a program that benefits the entire school community, above and beyond the benefits reaped by its graduates. To date, the research literature on IB schools has been clear about the benefits of participation; what remains unclear is how and to what extent the program affects the educational experience of non-IB students as well. In an effort to learn more about these claims, the researcher conducted a qualitative study of an IB school, specifically interviewing teachers and administrators about the IB and its impact on non-IB students. The study identified two general arguments the school was making to this end: 1) the IB benefits the whole school by attracting students (and the funding that follows them) through Open Enrollment, and 2) IB-trained teachers teach non-IB classes, providing the whole school with an improved teacher capacity. The principal findings of this study suggest that offering the IB program benefitted non-IB students in ways that the school claimed—but only to an extent. The results of this study reveal how certain social and political realities emerge alongside program growth, and how these factors influence the distribution of benefits over time. As test scores increasingly signaled program quality, the need to preserve the school’s reputation seemed to prompt a corresponding shift of high-quality teachers towards IB. From the interviews, it was clear that IB classes were smaller than general education classes, and that the teachers with the highest status were disproportionately assigned to teach the upper-level classes. When put together, the case study data points at

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seemingly inevitable inconsistencies between the claims that the IB benefits non-IB students and the ongoing institutional necessities of the program. Abstract Approved: ____________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________ Title and Department ____________________________________ Date

RAISING ALL BOATS? AN EXAMINATION OF CLAIMS THAT THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE DIPLOMA PROGRAM IS GOOD FOR ALL

by Ryan Patrick O'Connor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa July 2011 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Scott McNabb

Copyright by RYAN PATRICK O'CONNOR 2011 All Rights Reserved

Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL _______________________ PH.D. THESIS _______________ This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of Ryan Patrick O'Connor has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies at the July 2011 graduation. Thesis Committee: ___________________________________ Scott McNabb, Thesis Supervisor ___________________________________ David Bills ___________________________________ Marcus Haack ___________________________________ Peter Hlebowitsh ___________________________________ Bruce Fehn

For my son Ezra

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The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I must first thank my advisor, Scott McNabb, who mentored me faithfully, encouraged me evenly, criticized me compassionately, all of which ensured that the path to completion was true. On this rich and challenging journey, your advice and guidance allowed me to learn the critical lessons when they mattered most. For the past five years at the University of Iowa, you have provided me with many forums that have made my work possible, though none more important and highly regarded than your friendship. I was truly fortunate to have worked with a dissertation committee that not only helped shape this study, but my understanding and appreciation of scholarship overall. To David Bills, who introduced me to my wife, I continue to appreciate the kindness you have shared with both of us. Thanks for your encouragement, as you have remained an interested and active voice of reason throughout my studies. To Mark Haack, you must know, if it were not for your mastery of the accordion, I would not have been able to hear the central metaphor of my thesis. To Peter Hlebowitsh, your graduate seminars were important—even critical—steps in my learning along the way, though I am sure that I will remember the times we met for coffee or lunch best. Your genuine interest in education is inspiring, and your dedication to students is profound. And, finally, Bruce Fehn, who rounded out this group perfectly, my gratitude naturally goes to you. It was no accident that we crossed paths, as you were the first and only individual I met at the University of Iowa who had both knowledge and experience with the subject of my thesis. Thanks for making this committee complete. Importantly here I would like to recognize and appreciate, Ann Swanson, whose intelligence, patience, and generosity of spirit provided me the space to grow with this endeavor. You are simply a great woman. Thank You. To my family and friends, trust me when I say that all the kind, reassuring words were heard, and know that however success is defined in such a process, it is surely

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shared with each of you. In particular, I want to express the essence of my gratitude for my parents, Tom and Maria O’Connor: may the honor and achievement here reflect my dedication to you both, as well as my admiration for each. Similarly, to my buddy Dean Williams, who remains collaborator-in-chief in all things for years…your insights and edits are everywhere—in this document and on my life. It is my hope now that we can make time for Ed and Gert again. Ultimately it is you, Noga O’Connor that I wish to thank as the sole person in my life who is all of the above: family, friend, mentor and partner. Your wisdom, energy, patience and love have brought meaning into every endeavor, and to you I promise to rededicate myself in ways you will always deserve. You are every page forevermore, and I look forward to sharing this appreciation for the rest of our days.

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ABSTRACT The International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma program has been one of the fastest growing accelerated learning programs in recent years. At the high school level, the program offers a focus on critical thinking, combined with the accountability of external assessments of student performance. A significant portion of the program’s growth is attributed to its effective marketing, presenting itself as a program that benefits the entire school community, above and beyond the benefits reaped by its graduates. To date, the research literature on IB schools has been clear about the benefits of participation; what remains unclear is how and to what extent the program affects the educational experience of non-IB students as well. In an effort to learn more about these claims, the researcher conducted a qualitative study of an IB school, specifically interviewing teachers and administrators about the IB and its impact on non-IB students. The study identified two general arguments the school was making to this end: 1) the IB benefits the whole school by attracting students (and the funding that follows them) through Open Enrollment, and 2) IB-trained teachers teach non-IB classes, providing the whole school with an improved teacher capacity. The principal findings of this study suggest that offering the IB program benefitted non-IB students in ways that the school claimed—but only to an extent. The results of this study reveal how certain social and political realities emerge alongside program growth, and how these factors influence the distribution of benefits over time. As test scores increasingly signaled program quality, the need to preserve the school’s reputation seemed to prompt a corresponding shift of high-quality teachers towards IB. From the interviews, it was clear that IB classes were smaller than general education classes, and that the teachers with the highest status were disproportionately assigned to teach the upper-level classes. When put together, the case study data points at

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seemingly inevitable inconsistencies between the claims that the IB benefits non-IB students and the ongoing institutional necessities of the program.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ...............................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................1 Statement of the Problem..................................................................................1 Rationale for the Study .....................................................................................4 Research Questions ...........................................................................................5 Significance of the Study ..................................................................................5 Limitations ........................................................................................................7 Overview of Chapters .......................................................................................8 CHAPTER II: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE........................................................10 Introduction.....................................................................................................10 Educational Context........................................................................................11 The Equity/Excellence Debate .......................................................................13 Excellence................................................................................................14 Equity ......................................................................................................15 The Convergence of Equity and Excellence ...........................................16 IB in the United States ....................................................................................17 The Characteristics of the IB program ............................................................19 Mission and strategy ................................................................................19 The Programs...........................................................................................20 Studies of the IB .............................................................................................22 Program Components and Whole School Effects ...................................24 Efforts to Expand Program Impacts ........................................................27 The Problem of Program Implementation ...............................................29 School Choice .................................................................................................31 Introduction .............................................................................................31 The Debate...............................................................................................32 Program Selection ...................................................................................36 Market-Based Incentives .........................................................................38 Summary..................................................................................................39 The Present Study ...........................................................................................40 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................42 Introduction.....................................................................................................42 Rationale for Research Design .......................................................................43 Case Study Approach .....................................................................................43 Sample Selection: The Case and its Qualifiers ...............................................45 Data Collection: Multiple Methods ................................................................50 Interviews ................................................................................................51 Observations ............................................................................................56 Documents ...............................................................................................59 Data Management ...........................................................................................60 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................61 Quality Control: Validity and Reliability .......................................................63 viii

Role of the Researcher ....................................................................................67 Summary .........................................................................................................71 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS ...............................................................................................73 Introduction.....................................................................................................73 Section I ..........................................................................................................74 Introduction .............................................................................................74 Strategic Plan: Following the Money ......................................................74 Marketing Advantage: The Signaling Power of IB .................................79 Returns on the Investment .......................................................................80 Complications and Accommodations ......................................................84 Summary................................................................................................101 Section II.......................................................................................................102 Introduction ...........................................................................................102 Explicit Policy or Implicit Philosophy: The Split Assignment .............103 Professional Learning Communities .....................................................118 Professional Development: Who’s on Deck? ........................................125 Summary................................................................................................128 CHAPTER V: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .....................................................129 Introduction...................................................................................................129 Open Enrollment: The Message is Clear? ....................................................130 Tracking Teacher Training: Professional Developments? ...........................137 Summary of Discussion ................................................................................140 Directions for Future Study ..........................................................................142 Concluding Thoughts....................................................................................144 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................146

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LIST OF TABLES Table 1.

List of Key Stakeholders Interviewed ......................................................................55

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Case Study Tactics and Responses ...........................................................................66

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CHS Class Size 2004-2010 .......................................................................................82

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Private School Enrollment Decreasing: 2005-2009..................................................97

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.

The IB Diploma Program .........................................................................................21

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CHS National Newsweek Ranking 2003- 2007 .......................................................49

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District Enrollment Trends, 2001-2010, Projected and Actual. ...............................77

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Certificate and Diploma Participation, 2006-2010. ..................................................86

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Statement of the Problem At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama urged us all to recognize that “Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy.” In this singular imperative, Obama characterized a central dilemma of our era—that is, in a flattening world, how will schooling in the U.S. keep both the advantaged and the disadvantaged moving forward? We know it is difficult to do both. We also know it is urgent that we do both now. To meet the challenge of providing every child with a world-class education, programs that promise to raise academic achievement for all are continually introduced. One outcome of this pursuit is that programs once reserved for selected students in college-preparatory tracks are now increasingly touted as a mechanism for advancing the interests of educational reform and whole school change (Achieve, 2009; Glennan and Resnick, 2004; Grubb and Oakes, 2007; NCEE, 2007). Recent studies on how these programs may build capacity in our current system are beginning to emerge, and among the more notable programs gaining considerable attention is the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma program (Martinez and Klopnott, 2005; Matthews and Hill, 2005; Mayer, 2006). In this way, amid renewed concerns that schooling in the U.S is losing its competitive edge, “the perception that the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Baccalaureate organization‟s academic programs offer just what American students need in today‟s more globally competitive environment seems to be catching on” (Cech, 2008, p. 2). Over the past 40 years, the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program has quietly moved from “a program for internationally mobile students preparing for

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university” into a considerable force in education reform (Siskin and Weinstein, 2008, p. 2). During this period, the IB has developed a strong reputation for a rigorous curriculum and assessment system, which is now recognized as the “gold standard” in college preparation (Byrd, 2007). The emergence of the IB as a leader in providing high-quality education has been magnified by its highly visible status in America‟s public schools, and the growth associated with its reputation has clearly caught the attention of the educational community. Since 2007, IB World schools have made up more than one-third of the top 100 schools in Newsweek‟s annual list of “America‟s Best High Schools”, and year-to-year growth has increased from 12% in 2007 to 19% in 2009 (IBO, 2009). As a result of its reputation, there has been growing support for the increased use of the IB, especially in urban areas. Building on its recent success as a Magnet program, the IB has been lauded for its steadfast ability to enter local contexts without losing its luster, falling victim to “lethal mutations” and the downward adjustment many programs experience (Conner, 2008). Still, what little we know about the IB in these contexts is mostly related to the benefits it provides its participants. Studies on the benefits of participating in these programs—ranging from reduced costs of college and higher rates of acceptance in selective universities, to significant advantages in postsecondary perseverance and attainment (Bailey and Karp, 2003; Duevel, 1999; Mayer, 2008)—have indicated that this rapid expansion is not without merit. The elevated status the IB has received by federal and state policy has contributed to the situation, as there are a whole host of incentives for schools to follow this trend (Finn and Davis, 2007; Karp et al., 2007; Kyberg-Davis and Callahan, 2007). All this activity, however, is creating a phenomenon surrounding the IB‟s power to produce effects beyond its program design. There are reports that the program serves as a powerful signal about a community‟s commitment to education, and there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence about improved teacher quality, as well as additional resources when funds follow students to districts that are trying to attract a greater (self-

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selected) student body (Callahan, 2005; Conner, 2008; Garda-Grace, 2002; Matthews and Hill, 2005). The ability of these positive outcomes to impact students on the periphery of its implementation, as many proponents now claim, has grown faster than our actual understanding of how and why and to what extent these benefits extend beyond the students in the IB program. Some of the most substantial examples of the positive impacts of using the IB to benefit the whole school can be found on the International Baccalaureate Organization‟s own website (www.ibo.org). More promotional than scientific, the IBO features „case studies‟ of IB schools from around the world, offering insights into the beliefs and expectations for adopting the IB to benefit everyone, thus improving the whole school. At their core, these mini-profiles provide a snapshot of the host school, replete with pictures and quotations pertaining to the decision to host the IB. One of these case studies—that of Annapolis High School—describes the educational benefits that the whole school is expected to experience through “Ripple Effects”. The former superintendent of schools explained how the decision to adopt the IB diploma program was seen “as the surest way to meet his school board‟s objective of achieving greater access for its 75,000 students to education of the highest quality” (p. 1). The idea, he added: “was rooted in the notion that programs with a reputation for educational rigor will “create an ascending floor and ceiling of expectation and achievement” for all students (p. 2). “Simply put,” explains Dr. Smith, “as lower performing students are challenged with the same expectations as higher performing students, shifts in achievement are continuously elevated.” Central to Dr. Smith‟s vision, now reinforced by interim superintendent Nancy Mann, is the belief that the Diploma Program [sic] has a positive impact on the wider educational culture: “The IB framework extends throughout the educational environment—not only increasing academic rigor [sic], but also affecting social, physical, emotional and cultural norms.” (p.2) While acknowledging that the “most immediately evident progress” was observable in the 100 students enrolled in the Diploma Program, it was “the wider

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repercussions of having the Diploma Program in the school system” that the Superintendent found most exciting. Using a metaphor to justify his anticipation, he claimed that “the Diploma Program is a pebble dropped in a pond, and its impact sends out ripples many times greater than the discrete delivery of the Diploma Program itself” (p. 3). He goes on to say that these ripple effects “can be multiple and far-reaching,” particularly noting the IB teacher training, which is expected to improve instruction as teachers “transfer their newly acquired skills and enthusiasms to their other classes.” In a prominent academic journal, the present Director General of the IBO, Jeffrey Beard (2008), and his predecessor, Ian Hill, provide a review of similar testimony, essentially collecting and providing documentation about how educators have described the impact of the IB on the whole school. At George Mason High School, Falls Church, Virginia, the principal reported how he had “heard countless educators referring to a „rising tide lifting all boats‟ phenomenon when describing what the IB's effect has been on their schools” (p. 3). Using this idea to justify his district‟s decision to adopt the program, he explained how “early on, teachers noticed a „challenge creep‟ that spread to non-IB classes.” Essentially confirming this trend, he added that “students across the board have responded positively to the higher expectations” (p. 3). Rationale for the Study As pre-packaged school reform design models gain favor, questions remain about how top-down approaches have helped realignment efforts to reform schools from the bottom-up. In addition, although there is a growing trend for high school students to „dual-enroll‟, concerns remain about who is taking advantage of these opportunities, as well as how these programs impact those who do not. Even so, schools who adopt the IB claim that it successfully combines equitable access to advanced curricula, as well as the drive for whole-school change.

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In order to get an in-depth look at the policies and processes that influence the governing and distribution of the IB‟s impact on non-IB students—or “ripple effects”— my research focuses on a single district. Siskin and Weinstein (2008) argued that “when a large majority of IB World schools in the U.S. are public schools, and when the interest from districts in adopting IB as part of a strategy of educational reform and school improvement is increasing, the question of district role is particularly relevant and timely” (p. 2). Aligned with federal incentives that allocate specific funds for increasing access to IB ($380 million in 2007 alone as part of the American Competitiveness Initiative), the Midwest has some of the most comprehensive policies for expanding its delivery (IBO, 2008), making it an ideal region for exploring the effects of the IB program on the whole school. This study will be looking at the whole-school benefit claims in one school district and ask—in what ways do accelerated learning options, such as the IB, affect students who do not participate in them? Research Questions 

What are the specific claims made about the IB program as a vehicle for school improvement?

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How do administrators and teachers explain the benefits of the IB program for the non-participants?

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To what degree do claims for effects of the IB program on non-IB students seem to be accurate? Significance of the Study The widespread appeal of the International Baccalaureate program—for

policymakers, educators, parents, and students—has evoked considerable excitement and increased calls for further expansion. Like many adaptive innovations, however, the promotion of accelerated learning options has outpaced the policy infrastructure needed to support and evaluate its evolution and sustainability (Reindl, 2006). The IB is believed

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to serve schools like a rising tide, improving the quality of education for the entire system in which it is placed. Whether it does so remains a mystery, as data collection to date has not permitted a large-scale quantitative study to measure the impact of the IB on the whole school. Yet anecdotal reports persist, which have served to expand the IB‟s growth, as schools are increasingly using whole school improvements as a basis to justify the adoption of the program. To complicate this matter, though the rise in popularity of using the IB to this end is frequently noted in both empirical studies and promotional literature, little is known about the nature of these claims, or how this practice plays out in schools. Understanding the policies and practices that support the IB as a whole school reform model are critical for its expansion, especially in relation to its increasingly visible and relatively new role for improving the overall quality of schools. While my focus is on the how the IB diploma program is utilized to improve the quality of schooling for all students at one particular school, and the results may be significant for this organization, many of the policy issues examined here may be suggestive of larger trends. In this way, it is important for the IB representatives and for educational reformers in general to have a better understanding of these educational claims, as they are fundamental issues in reform efforts. If school districts can provide high quality learning opportunities that benefit all the students in the system, then the answers to my research questions will be of interest to a variety of stakeholders in the education community. Recent research on the role of the school district has found that when the district takes an active role in situating and supporting IB programs, the benefits to the whole school can be amplified. And, in turn, these benefits are returned to the district as a result of its active role (Mayer, 2006, 2008, 2010; Siskin and Weinstein, 2008, 2009, 2010). How this occurs—if at all, and to what extent—in a different context will help clarify the nature of the claims about broader effects, and potentially raise important questions about the relatively new phenomenon of using the IB for improving the quality of schools. The strategies used by school leaders to

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maximize the whole school benefits, as well as overcome barriers, will be of interest to the school districts thinking about adopting the IB, as well as those seeking to strengthen the programs they already have in place. By exploring the claims at one school in detail, this dissertation adds to the literature of using the IB as an instrument for educational reform. Such an investigation may also serve as a basis for generating greater understanding into this phenomenon, clarifying how and why the IB program is expected to interact with the whole school, as well as what these interactions may mean for the program and the school. In these ways, this research has potential significance for a range of stakeholders, including policymakers, administrators, educators, researchers, teachers and students. Limitations The kinds of questions raised in a given study determine the research design. The focus of this study is a contemporary phenomenon, and it is context-specific. The use of case study research design is most powerful when the phenomenon under investigation is examined within clearly defined boundaries (Yin, 2003). In this study, I looked at the relationship of the claims made about the IB at one school, which had its own characteristics and qualities, making it unlike any other school in the US. Since the relationship of the IB with its host school is oftentimes unique, understanding this interaction requires a case by case analysis to determine the factors responsible for the phenomenon. Data from IB schools has yet been collected and managed in a manner to permit quantitative analysis, and the factors contributing to the efficacy of these claims remain vague. To date, even as some claims converge on strategies that suggest impact, the tactics to this end are often confounded by the context, creating variability that makes generalization difficult, if not impossible to determine. In part, the purpose of this study emerged out of a lack of measureable data, which raised questions like, “Does the mere

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presence of an IB program (as many advocates now claim) benefit students who do not participate?” Without the ability to answer that basic question, the persistence of claims that it does so represents the enigma that gave rise to this study. In fact, precisely because empirical evidence was lacking to support the continued and increasing use of the IB for whole school improvement made it a “phenomenon” worth investigation. Additionally, in this study, I do not ask about all IB schools, nor do I attempt to extrapolate the findings to any other setting; instead, any generalizing that takes place is offered only in relation to the propositions that gave rise to my research questions. The research design utilized here was limited by time as well as place. Data collection took place in two week-long site visits during one academic year at a particular High School in the Midwest, which made the findings unique to the period and place. Such a snapshot is not a sample of schooling in the US, nor does it pretend to be. The drive for discovery here dictated depth rather than breadth, and subsequent chapters are mindful of these boundaries. Overview of Chapters In Chapter II, a review of the literature sets out to provide a conceptual framework for this study, beginning with an outline of the tension in American education between Excellence and Equity, and how the IB program has been situated among these ongoing debates in education reform. This review then discusses how the IB has been studied, as well as what these studies can tell us about why the IB is expected benefit non-IB students. A general discussion of school choice is subsequently offered, and the ways the IB performs in an Open Enrollment context in particular follows. Chapter III describes the qualitative case study methodology used in this study. Given the research questions, a general discussion regarding the merits of this paradigm is provided, as well as the specific value of utilizing case study design. In this chapter, I also address the site and subjects designated for this study, how the data was collected and the procedures for

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analysis. Lastly, I explain the protocols for maintaining a trustworthy and credible relationship with the reader throughout the study. Chapter IV presents the findings from the case study. Here, multiple sources come together, and the data related to the research questions is analyzed separately for each claim. Using the interviews and documents, I present the explanations for whole school improvement by matching patterns and allowing themes to emerge. Chapter V summarizes the findings presented in chapter IV, offering interpretations and implications, and answering my research questions based on the evidence. Ultimately, directions for further research are recommended.

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CHAPTER II A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Introduction In establishing the parameters of this literature review, this chapter details the educational context that serves as a foundation for using the IB to benefit the whole school. At the outset, I outline the competing pressures that have created the productive tension giving rise to the IB program and its use as a whole school intervention. Accordingly, I characterize and delineate the tension between excellence and equity, the ultimate convergence of the two concepts and the emerging role of the IB program in that convergence. Also known as the ―E-quality‖ debate in education reform, this discussion provides the conceptual framework underpinning the claims that are the subject of this study. A review of empirical research on the IB follows, emphasizing the program characteristics that have been noted to support the use of the IB as a whole school intervention, as well as the problems associated with these efforts to date. This review highlights the need for studies to generate greater understanding of the potential relationship between the IB and schools that adopt it; in particular, the specific factors that may be responsible for the program‘s perceived promise of improving the quality of education for those students who do not directly participate. The final section of this chapter offers a synthesis of the conceptual framework and the characteristics of the IB to further introduce and discuss issues relevant to this case study. In this way, the political nature embedded in the debate about the impact of school choice helps to ground assumptions and suggest potential patterns as they relate to market-based reforms in general and program selection in particular.

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Educational Context Among American educational reformers, there is a general sense that schools should promote both equality and quality, but cannot foster both goals at once. This paradox is often attributed to the practice of public policy making which tends to focus on the problem at hand, leaving general principles and long-term consequences for others to worry about (Biggs and Helms, 2006). Consequently, the complex process for educational policy has been characterized as ―a pendulum‖ that sways—often in tandem with other major policy issues—between different visions of society and the purpose of schools. In their analysis of the ―E-Quality‖ discourse, Smith and Lusthaus (1995) note that ―as complex issues distill into slogans, the debate is often reduced to demands, in the name of equality, for neighborhood schools that include all students, versus the call in the name of quality for specialized classes, curricula, and schools for selected students‖ (379). Decades of failed attempts to improve the quality of American schools have led many policymakers to conclude that systematic efforts rarely succeed (Berends, Bodilly and Kirby, 2002; Smith and O‘Day, 1990). Partly the result of the decentralized nature of school oversight, the political fortitude needed to sustain efforts is also subverted by the election cycle (Biggs and Helms, 2006). And in the era of high-stakes accountability, the need to show the electorate positive outcomes has compounded this scenario, moving the debate beyond the usual rhetoric. As a result, easy to install, top-down models have gained favor (ALO, 2006). Better known as accelerated learning options, these reforms represent a strategy that suggest increased rigor and relevance alongside standards-based accountability schemes are best suited to raise achievement for all students. In the current educational context, there are a number of school reform designs based on the notion that schools can improve the quality of education while promoting equal access. Among them are dual credit programs, or accelerated learning options, which serve as ―pathways to college‖ (Martinez and Klopnott, 2005). These programs

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allow students to take college-level classes and earn college credit while still in high school. This practice is consistent with research on restructuring efforts that utilize predictors of college going behavior, such as increasing academic rigor through the curriculum (Adelman, 1999, 2006) and aligning curricula with college entry requirements (Gamoran, 2007; National Governors Association, 2008). It is not enough, however, to simply provide these options without any consideration for preparation. Critics maintain that in order for school reform to effectively address the academic and social needs of those traditionally underrepresented in the programs, educators need to further align the K-16 system to ensure preparedness (Achieve, 2009; Martinez and Klopnott, 2005). Institutional barriers, such as enrollment policies, minimum requirements (or prerequisite coursework), and tracking also need to be addressed (Oakes, 1985; Oakes and Saunders, 2008). Restructuring schools for equity and excellence requires deep organizational changes—both structural and cultural—in the nature of schooling (Lee, 2001). As prepackaged school reform design models gain favor, questions remain about how top-down approaches have helped realignment efforts to reform schools from the bottom-up. In addition, although there is a growing trend for high school students to ‗dual enroll‘, concerns remain about who is taking advantage of these opportunities. (For example, see Smith and Holcombe, 2009, which shows that white Florida students are three times more likely to enroll in dual credit courses than minorities.) Even so, schools who adopt the IB claim that it successfully combines equitable access to advanced curricula, as well as the drive for whole-school change. In the following section I will characterize and delineate the tension between excellence and equity, the ultimate convergence of the two concepts and the emerging role of the IB program in that convergence. I will argue that the IB has benefitted by its unique role in affecting the excellence/equity debate by purporting to meet both educational and societal needs.

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The Equity/Excellence Debate Informed by different sociopolitical visions of society and the purpose of schools, efforts to improve schooling in the U.S. have been characterized by competing agendas. In the landscape of school reform, Hess (2005) describes ―a triangle of tension‖ between the three contending forces driving change: excellence, equity and efficiency. Because educational goods are perceived as a zero-sum game (Noguera, 2001; Robbins, 2007), and the conservative versus liberal tug-of-war is perceived in shades of black and white, the source of the tension is a struggle over resources and the allocation of educational funds. While conservatives promote the concepts of high standards and meritocratic competition, liberals are concerned with access, social justice and serving as many students as possible. The reason the two competing concepts of excellence (high standards) and equity (access) seem contradictory, rather than complimentary, is the politicizing of the terms (Spring, 2002). The bipartisan nature of the American political system dictates a dichotomous worldview on most issues, and educational policy is not spared. Since each of the two main political parties holds to one concept and promotes it as a part of its platform, we have become accustomed to the polarization of the debate embodied by the rhetoric of reform. Still, the philosophical roots of the dichotomy essentially follow a simple logic. In order to serve more students and include even the most disadvantaged educational stakeholders, educational requirements have to be lowered; otherwise, these new participants will not be able to pass classes, move forward in the system or gain admissions to different educational institutions. Hence, a system that is first and foremost concerned with maintaining high academic standards, will inevitably find itself excluding the most academically challenged, who will not be able to keep up. Such a system has to be exclusionary by nature; and as Clark and Zimmerman have noted, ―Excellence without equity is elitism, and equity without excellence produces mediocrity‖ (Hess, 2005, p. 21).

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Excellence The excellence movement in education is best characterized by the following goals: the challenge of setting higher standards, holding students to higher expectations and running schools with a zero-tolerance for mediocrity (Finn and Ravitch, 1996). In the 1980s, as a result of a series of reports by the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983), the Carnegie Foundation (Boyer, 1983), and the National Association of Independent Schools (Sizer, 1984), efforts to improve the quality of schools coalesced around certain core principles. Primarily concerned with rescuing falling standards here at home and rebuilding our competitiveness abroad, the way we understand standards-based reform today emerged from a singular concern over how we measure up. To this end, as a way to ensure that schools are preparing students to compete, proponents of an excellence agenda support policies that strengthen accountability and expand education options. According to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute—a non-profit think tank dedicated to advancing educational excellence—the Foundation‘s scholars in their network rally around the notion that all children deserve a high-quality K-12 education in a school of their choice. Their research and advocacy are grounded in such convictions as ―the path to increased student learning is to set ambitious standards, employ rigorous assessments, and hold students, teachers and schools accountable for performance‖ and that ―every school should deliver a content-rich curriculum taught by knowledgeable teachers‖ (www.edexcellence.net). Critics suggest that the standards-based accountability regimes—either deliberately or unintentionally (Burris and Garrity, 2009)—have adversely affected minorities, low-SES communities, and schools that typically suffer from a lack of resources. In this way, the policy goals that have grown out of the excellence agenda continue to define ―the pursuit of quality with educating majority-group students, especially those thought to have ‗superior ability‘‖ (Smith and Lusthaus, 1995, p. 379).

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The heavy reliance on norm-referenced, standardized tests to indicate academic achievement are based on creating a bell curve for further sorting and selecting the best students for advancement. In return, excellence proponents note the importance of objective student assessment for this same exact goal – pushing the bright forward and making sure they meet their full potential, especially if they come from an underprivileged background. Significantly, the excellence movement emphasizes the importance of reaching all students and expanding access; for them (read conservatives) the debate revolves around the realistic mechanisms for promoting access, while liberals argue that the strict standards-based system will result in exclusion, in spite of the inclusionary terminology used by its proponents. Equity The equity agenda is primarily concerned with opening up educational opportunities to be inclusive of all students, thus addressing the achievement gap. The achievement gap is the general term used to describe the disproportionate position of subgroups (race, class or gender) on the normal distribution of performance measures. The liberal claim is that a true proportionate distribution, and thus a closing of the achievement gap, will take place once schools and society follow the concepts of meritocracy and equal opportunity. A true educational system that follows these concepts will result in equal representation of all social groups among high school graduates, college graduates, and leading professionals in the labor force. For example, the idea is that if women are 50% of the population, we would expect them to be represented as 50% of politicians; and if African-Americans are 15% of the population, we would expect 15% of college graduates to be African-American. Liberals maintain that until meritocracy and equal opportunity are met in our schools, action should be taken to redress unequal outcomes.

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The absence of that equal representation is what drives the equity agenda and has been driving it for the last several generations. Equity proponents argue that our educational system is highly susceptible to the effects of student background (race, gender and class), and therefore we should actively strive to better serve the disadvantaged—those born into less fortunate social circumstances. At the heart of the liberal concerns is the discrepancy between the ideal—meritocracy and equal opportunity—and reality—a system in which those from privileged backgrounds are one and a half times more likely to attend college than low-SES students (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2007, chart 21). As a result, the equity agenda has been aimed toward increasing access at all levels of the system as a means of making up for its inability to serve all students equally. Conservative critics fear that the focus on inclusiveness will jeopardize the quality of the school curriculum to the point of deeming it meaningless. They often point to the watered-down curriculum we now see in most urban public schools and argue that a diluted curriculum is not serving anybody and results in the ‗miseducation‘ of an entire generation (Finn and Ravitch, 1996). Equity advocates, in turn, do not suggest that the curriculum should be weakened; instead, they campaign for the allocation of money toward serving traditionally under-served populations, as the most important educational goal of our generation. As Darling-Hammond (2007) notes, ―Throughout two centuries of slavery, a century of court-sanctioned discrimination based on race, and a half century of differential access to education by race, class, language and background, and geographical location, we have become accustomed in the United States to educational inequality‖ (318). The Convergence of Equity and Excellence As these forces in education reform exchange critiques, what remains clear is that neither agenda is satisfied with the status quo. And though they still compete, reconciling

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the achievement gap has become the battleground for a bipartisan agenda. Joel Spring (2002) noted that the No Child Left Behind legislation signed by George W. Bush was actually Al Gore‘s presidential political platform. Trying to take credit for the massive federal law, the Progressive Policy Institute complained about this co-option to no avail. The truth is, these agendas have been merging for the past 20 years—―From A Nation at Risk in 1983 to the National Goals Education Panel of 1990 and the Goals 2000 Act in 1994, federal policy had attempted to increase standards and better align curriculum, instruction, and assessment in the nation‘s schools‖ (Gamoran, 2007, p. 3). Most recently, the new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan (2009) weighed in on this trend, stating that ―creating common standards hasn‘t always been popular. Right now, though, there‘s a growing consensus that this is the right thing to do.‖ The result of back-and-forth has been fairly profound, too. ―Whereas just two decades ago we would have triumphed an increase in basic skill scores in reading and mathematics and a reduction of high school dropouts, reform rhetoric now emphasizes ‗World Class Standards‘ of academic attainment for all‖ (Byrk as quoted in Lee, 2001). IB in the United States The IB was originally developed in Europe in an effort to provide an international standard of excellence for college-bound students. And though it has been a part of the American educational scene for the past 40 years, it has recently emerged as a unique player in the ―E-quality‖ debate. To be sure, strong opinions exist on this subject, especially from the fringes. Educational progressives fret that AP courses are ―a mile wide and an inch deep‖ and overly focused on ―content‖; some political conservatives grumble that the IB is an internationalist plot, designed to undermine American exceptionalism and culture. In the education mainstream, however, most practitioners, business leaders, and policymakers seem instinctively (or by habituation) to trust the AP and IB brands as marks of curricular excellence. (Byrd, 2007, p. 8)

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Bunnell (2008) argued how this habituation has its roots in earlier calls for school reform, noting that ―A Nation at Risk‖ was the first of several reports to single out the IB as a successful strategy in improving the quality of schooling. And over time, the global appeal of the International Baccalaureate program has won favor among a variety of competing interests here in the States. Conner (2008) suggested that ―The IB could offer an antidote to the flaws of the current American education system, not only because it would challenge students academically, but also because it presented a way of measuring American students against international competitors‖ (p. 332). As it stands, the IB is hailed as a high-standards, excellence-focused reform, and the use of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program to signal a school‘s commitment to world-class education continues to receive considerable attention (Chmelynski, 2005; Matthews and Hill, 2005; Schachter, 2008). For these reasons alone, it is not surprising that schools in the US would find attractive what many consider the ―gold standard‖ in college-preparatory curriculum (Byrd, 2007). In this way, standardsbased advocates in education reform are inclined to applaud its assessment model—based on well-defined criteria in accord with a set of disciplinary standards, which has the power to signal learning (Bishop,1998), and liberals view the content of the assessment model as educating the whole child (Matthews and Hill, 2005). In a recent analysis of the migration of IB into the Inner City, Conner (2008) commented that ―It is perhaps because the IB represents a compromise between the traditionally polarized camps of the standards-based reformers and the progressive educators that it has attracted such widespread attention in the United States; each group can find within it an appealing feature or a philosophical premise‖ (p. 334). With the standards movement prevailing upon policy and the decline of inner-city schools, urban educators have been under increasing pressures to follow higher standards and re-attract strong students; indeed, Conner (2008) noted that it is ―Precisely because of its reputation as a vehicle for raising standards and attracting able students, some of the

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IB‘s staunchest champions in the United States now advocate bringing the program to low-income schools‖ (p. 336). Since the 90‘s, the IB has been adopted by many more urban schools as a tool to address these problems (Matthews and Hill, 2005). In concert with this trend, federal and state government initiatives are directing funding toward increasing minority participation in programs such as the IB as a way to close the achievement gap (e.g. Minnesota Department of Education, 2007a, 2007b; U.S. Department of Education Press Releases, 1998, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). In fact, approximately half of the IB schools in the U.S. provide free and reduced lunch to over a third of its students (IBO, 2008). A closer look at the characteristics of the IB programs helps clarify how this scenario can possibly play out in the American system. The Characteristics of the IB program The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) offers high quality academic programs of international education to a worldwide community of schools. According to the their website, the IBO claims that its three programs for students aged 3 to 19 help develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world. Taken together, the three programs represent a highly aligned continuum of education from K-12. There are more than 745,000 IB students at 2,715 schools in 138 countries. Over the past ten years, the number of students has grown between 10% and 20% each year, resulting in remarkable levels of sustained growth. Mission and strategy The International Baccalaureate claims that it is more than its three educational programs. ―At our heart we are motivated by a mission to create a better world through education. We value our hard-earned reputation for quality, for high standards and for pedagogical leadership. We achieve our goals by working with partners and by actively involving our stakeholders, particularly teachers. We promote intercultural understanding

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and respect, not as an alternative to a sense of cultural and national identity, but as an essential part of life in the 21st century. All of this is captured in our mission statement: The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programs of international education and rigorous assessment. These programs encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right. (www.ibo.org)

The Programs The IB programs can be offered individually or as a continuum, which the IB suggests is a deliberate attempt to allow districts both flexibility and continuity. 

The Primary Years Program for pupils aged 3 to 12 focuses on the development of the whole child in the classroom and in the world outside.



The Middle Years Program for pupils aged 11 to 16 provides a framework of academic challenge and life skills, achieved through embracing and transcending traditional school subjects.



The Diploma Program for students aged 16 to 19 is a demanding two-year curriculum leading to final examinations and a qualification that is welcomed by leading universities around the world. Of particular interest for this study is the Diploma Program, which is

implemented in the 11th and 12th grades with the diploma awarded to those who successfully complete coursework in six academic subjects. The curricular model has three central components: The Theory of Knowledge course, a service-learning requirement, and an independent research project. Upon completion of the IB curriculum, students take exit exams which are externally assessed by the International Baccalaureate

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Organization. All grades are based on criterion-reference rubrics that are identical for students around the world. The Diploma Program is displayed in the shape of a hexagon with six academic areas or subject groups surrounding a core of requirements (see Figure 1); students study the subjects concurrently and are thus exposed to the two great traditions of learning: the humanities and the sciences.

Figure 1. The IB Diploma Program

The IB pattern is a deliberate compromise between the early specialization preferred in some national systems and the greater breadth found in others. By arranging work in this fashion—with flexible choices for Higher level (240 teaching hours) and

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Standard level (150 hours)— students are able to achieve depth of study in the context of a broad and coherent curriculum over a two-year period. Furthermore, choosing higherlevel concentrations allows the student to pursue areas of personal interest and to meet special requirements of university entrance within a balanced overall program (IBO, 2002, p. 9). According to the IBO, each program includes a curriculum and pedagogy, student assessment appropriate to the age range, professional development for teachers and a process of school authorization and evaluation. Taken together, these program components create the foundation for claims by both equity and excellence advocates that the IB has the power to raise all boats. The following sections offer a brief review of these aspects as well as some of the studies that examine the nature of these claims. Studies of the IB In a study about whether or not the IB program deserves the ―gold star‖ status many perceive, researchers at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluated the AP and IB programs and found that these programs mostly succeed for two reasons. In his forward to the study, conservative educator Chester Finn explained why their results were encouraging. ―First, both set high academic standards and goals for learning that are well delineated for teachers, students, and parents. Equally important, the exams for both programs are well aligned to their standards, testing students on the content of their courses and considerably more‖. And secondly, ―these programs are linked with realworld benefits. AP and IB students not only develop knowledge and skills that better prepare them for college, but they can earn college credit for their efforts—a good motivation to stay with the program‖ (Byrd, 2007, p. 6). The idea that high quality curricula, well-aligned standards, and externally evaluated exams combined with incentives like college credit in today‘s educational context are generally accepted the goals of most educational reform and practice (Bishop, 2005; Museus et al., 2007). A

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review of the literature shows that these perceptions have significant merit, especially for those who have access to the program benefits. In an effort to expand the impacts of these benefits, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned a study to explore the ways credit-based transition programs (CBTPs), including the IB, may help middle and low-achieving students enter and succeed in college. The report highlights promising practices as well as the challenges CBTPs face when trying to include such students. In their executive summary, Hughes, Karp, Fermin and Bailey (2005) explained the beliefs and the barriers this way: CBTPs are widespread and interest in them by policymakers, educators, parents, and students has increased in recent years. In addition, while these programs are not new, the idea that they should be accessible to a broader range of students is a new approach. In the past, CBTPs enrolled primarily academically proficient and high-achieving students. Today, however, a growing number of policymakers, education reform groups, and researchers argue that middle- and even low-achieving high school students may benefit from participation in these programs. Yet, despite their popularity nationwide, there is limited research-based information on CBTPs, particularly those programs that include a broad range of students. (p. 8) The study, which looked at program features in five comprehensive CBTPs, examined the ways contextual features influenced program implementation. Focusing on four key program features—student recruitment and selection processes; curriculum; support services; and data collection and use—the authors make several recommendations to enhance the potential for these programs to not simply be widely available, but more purposefully beneficial to the whole school. Based on their cross-case analysis, ―The data indicate that three broad areas should be addressed by programs and policymakers seeking to help middle- and low-achieving students enroll and be successful in CBTPs: student access, institutional collaboration, and data collection for program evaluation‖ (Hughes et al., 2005, p. 10). In this next section, I review literature on the IB program, describing program components that contribute to the perception of a whole school effect, as well as discuss

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research that addresses the role of the IB in the context of the equity/excellence debate. I finish this review with a description of the challenge of program implementation. Program Components and Whole School Effects Program Fidelity The idea of ―program fidelity‖ refers to the ―quality assurance‖ inherent in IB, as a program with an external oversight. Since the program is not susceptible to the downward adjustment that plagues many attempts to restructure schools (Lee, 2001), the school itself changes—or levels up—when it adopts the IB (Glennan, Bodilly, Galegher and Kerr, 2004); indeed, the perception that the IB can enter the local context and produce such change is part of its appeal (Matthew and Hill, 2005). There are three main areas in which the IB serves member schools to assure the quality of its programs: the development of curriculum, the evaluation of student learning, and professional development. The degree of confidence in each of these program components is key to the positive perception that the IB produces ―spillover‖ effects. The Quality of the Curricula In a recent study by the Educational Policy and Improvement Center, Conley and Ward (2009) found that the IB has ―college-ready‖ standards, which are highly aligned with the expectations of university faculty in several disciplines. Research on how students perform in college bears this out as well. Duevel (1999) surveyed the registrars at 12 universities in the U.S. and former IB students attending them to determine whether the IB diploma was a predictor of success at the postsecondary level and beyond. The findings showed that participation in the IB program was an effective predictor of perseverance and attainment at the college level. This is consistent with several studies that examined the perceptions of the IB diploma program by admissions staff (Jenkins, 2003; Byrd, 2007).

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Efforts to extend these benefits are informed by studies that have shown how these programs influence those who rarely participate in them. For example, Clifford Adelman (1999) found that academic preparation is the most significant predictor of college success. In his follow-up study, Adelman (2006) confirmed the original findings—that rigorous course-taking patterns were key to college completion—and showed that the combination of academic background, coursework, class rank, and senior year test scores had a stronger relationship to the completion of a bachelor‘s degree than socioeconomic status. According the U.S. Department of education, the value the IB program has an added impact. In targeting funds towards expanding such programs, the budget rationale for FY2010 suggests that the introduction of rigorous curriculum engenders a leveling up through curricular realignment; in order to increase access, courses that prepare students for IB classes are introduced into the general school schedule, thus promoting a spillover of program benefits (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). The idea is that even if the program is implemented at the top, there must be efforts to create the necessary scaffolding to ensure proportional representation. Accountability/Assessment The Diploma Program‘s grading system is criterion based: each student‘s performance is measured against well-defined levels of achievement consistent from one examination session to the next. Grades, therefore, reflect attainment of knowledge and skills relative to set standards that are applied equally to all schools—top grades are not, for example, awarded to a certain percentage of students. Because of the greater degree of objectivity and reliability provided by the standard examination environment, externally evaluated examinations form the greatest share of the assessment for each subject: validity, reliability and fairness are the watchwords of the Diploma Program‘s comprehensive assessment strategy (IBO, 2002). Significantly, ―student evaluations that

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combine continuous and external assessment are more valid measures of learning than assessments based on only one methodology‖ (Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, 2002; as quoted in Bishop, 2005). Several researchers note how many important instructional goals can also be assessed externally and these assessments add a new and important perspective to the evaluation of learning (Becker and Rosen, 1992; Betts and Costrell, 2001). The employment of external assessment signals to the community that the school is especially committed to high-quality education. Matthews and Hill (2005) have suggested that this promotes a straight-forward theory of change: as the school‘s reputation improves and the school becomes attractive to more able students, the school culture becomes one of ―academic press‖ (Martinez and Klopnott, 2005). And when the school rallies around the idea of embracing high-quality curriculum, even nonparticipants are affected by the new academic culture and become more motivated (Buchanan et al, 1995; Rose, 2007). Teacher Quality Teacher quality has been shown to have a significant effect on student achievement (Darling-Hammond, 1999). As part of its program oversight, the IB requires teachers to attend its own professional development. Typically, at these conferences teachers go through a 4-day intensive training that is content-specific to their subject areas where they receive samples, practice rating, and work with the assessment schemes. They go through resource books, train in syllabus building, and discuss their specific issues with other IB teachers who teach the same topics. Many schools use specific strategies to justify how IB-trained teachers help the overall quality of the teachers. A review of policy statements show the repeated assertion that the teachers who attend the IB professional development will not form a separate cadre of faculty in the school, but are a part of the teaching force that all students interact

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with. A common approach is to have IB-trained teachers teach non-IB courses, as ideally they would bring the content and pedagogy with them to every class they teach. Rose (2007) suggests that this strategy has the potential to infuse rigor throughout the school, and the commitment to high-quality studying transfers to non-IB students as well. The hope is that IB teachers will elevate the rigor of non-IB classes, which would have the desired impact of improving the educational experiences of all students. Conner (2008) talked to several IB coordinators who professed the idea that ‗the rising tide floats all boats‘. During an interview, he noted how one coordinator suggested that a teacher‘s excitement and motivation ―trickles down to every other class that teacher teaches.‖ Another remarked that as they expose other kids to the program, ―some of that‘s going to filter out into the other curriculum and other kids might just go up a notch as well.‖ Teachers who have gone to workshops have returned and used the IB rubrics in their non-IB classes. ―In these schools the IB program‘s influence can be felt by more than those designated as IB students or teachers‖ (Conner, 2008, p. 337). Efforts to Expand Program Impacts While many researchers have studied the IB to determine the viability of ―embracing a challenging curriculum as a universal good for all students‖ (Burris, Welner and Murphy, 2008), their findings generally recommend broadening access and greater expansion. Therefore, much of the literature on using the IB to raise achievement focuses on structural inequalities in the system, and efforts to dismantle tracking in order to provide more equitable educational opportunities for students traditionally underserved (Hoffman, 2003; Mickelson and Everett, 2008; Rubin, 2008). For example, Kugler and Albright (2005) reported significant advances in promoting the benefits to a wider range of participants through a shift in policy from ‗gifted and talented‘ to an honors approach. Significantly, the policy meant ―rejecting a model that runs ‗a diploma-only program as a school-within-a-school‖ (p. 43). Addressing similar concerns, Buchanan et al. (2005)

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concluded that ―While there are disagreements about issues of academic segregation and exclusion, the IBDP is by and large perceived to have a positive effect on the general student population. The program is perceived to be an academic asset and of great benefit to schools that host them‖ (p. 61). This perception, however, is often complicated by the notion that excellence is compromised by unlimited access. In one particularly striking example, Noguera (2001) uses a 4-year study at Berkley High School to illustrate how racial disparities in academic outcomes are influenced by the structure of opportunity within schools and how efforts to address inequities often become politicized. Parents entered the fray when they perceived a threat to the educational interests of their children, especially if interventions are introduced that require a reallocation of resources or the restructuring of educational programs. ―Examples of the kinds of measures that might evoke the ire of this constituency include efforts to eliminate or reduce tracking or to open up access to gifted and talented or advanced placement courses‖ (p. 21). Accordingly, BHS shows how efforts to reduce disparities are effected by political factors, and clarifies ―why political rather than educational strategies alone are needed to respond to the racial achievement gap‖ (p. 19). A few researchers have looked at how introducing the IB benefits the whole school (Buchanan et al., 2005; Conner, 2008; Mayer, 2006). Their findings converge on a few themes that support the claims for whole-school benefits, such as: 

Targeted policies to expand access to rigorous curricula experienced by non-IB students



A leveling-up of standards to grant greater access, encouraging a K-12 alignment



The use of IB-trained teachers throughout the school



Raising the school‘s elevated reputation to attract more high-quality students, especially where greater enrollments translate into greater school resources Investigating the emerging ―district role in the International Baccalaureate,‖ from

a school-based or stand-alone program to a set of programs, Siskin and Weinstein (2008)

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commented on an ―evolutionary shift‖ in the strategic use of the IB in the United States. The study looked at district strategies, district policies, and district personnel in place for their expansion, support, and coherence. The findings indicted that when the district takes an active role in situating and supporting IB programs, the benefits to the whole school can be amplified. And these benefits return to the district as a result of its active role (Siskin and Weinstein, 2008). The Problem of Program Implementation Most research on comprehensive school reform has determined that a key problem with generating improvements in the whole school has to do with the program implementation (Borman et al., 2003; Datnow, 2005). Using the IB to promote wholeschool impact requires attention to the method of implementation, making sure that it is conducive to an extension of its benefits to all students. One of the most widely cited factors related to successful reform implementation efforts, using external models of school change to make an important impact within schools, is stakeholder buy-in and support (Borman et al., 2000; Datnow and Stringfield, 2000; Glennan et al., 2004). Significantly, Mayer (2008) found that buy-in is not the same for all stakeholders. Because of the additional effort to make the program function, each group needs to believe that the rewards warrant the extra effort. As this review has already indicated, ―the rewards did not need to be the same for each group of stakeholders; for teachers, one of the greatest rewards was the ability to teach motivated students; for parents and students, it was the reward of increased access to college; for principals, the reward was improved school reputation‖ (p. 7). In addition, Mayer (2008) points out that schools seeking to implement comprehensive reform models in large urban low-SES districts are challenged and subverted by low levels of district support, poor academic preparation (K-8), economic disadvantage of students in their attendance area, large student populations, limited

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leadership and teacher capacity. This is important for IB expansion efforts because these are the same factors that researchers have identified as the main forces influencing successful implementation of school reform models (Quint, 2006). Addressing these contextual factors prior to or early in the implementation process can dramatically increase the positive program impacts, especially in urban schools; indeed, Diamond, Randolph and Spillane (2004) present evidence that well-implemented reforms can support the development of ‗new‘ beliefs and cultures. ―Leaders who earn early and consistent stakeholder buy-in, invest in the capacity of teachers through ongoing professional development and evaluation, and foster a culture of high expectations and commitment to reform can improve implementations of IB and increase the impact of the program on students‖ (Mayer, 2008, p. 8). Furthermore, Desimone (2002) found that districts providing both support and incentives for school-wide reform had higher levels of sustained model implementation; whereas, the elimination of district support resulted in the collapse of these reforms in less than three years (Datnow, 2005). In this way, Burris, Welner, Wiley and Murphy (2007) emphasized the need for district or school level staff to reach out to parents and address concerns that will arise as the district implements policies that expand access to college prep and honors courses. A review of several case studies of purposeful program implementation revealed that high quality programs can maintain their integrity without limiting student access (Mayer, 2008). And still, the level of program fidelity—the degree with which program components, as outlined by the program developers—determines whether or not reforms will have a positive effect on student performance outcomes (Rowan, Harrison and Hayes, 2004). Berends, et al. (2002) concluded that using external change agents as a way of achieving reform in K-12 schools has shown that, as these externally developed interventions are implemented they go through significant changes over time as they adapt to local conditions and contexts (170). Therefore successful implementation requires close attention to the interactive effects between Core Implementation

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Components, Organizational Components and Influence Factors. (See Fixsen, Naoom, Blasé, Friedman, Wallace, 2005, diagram on p. 159). School Choice Introduction School choice is an umbrella term for policy initiatives and programs that allow students to transfer between schools within a designated area. This way, students and parents may exercise choice as to which school to attend, with the goal of more students attending high-performing schools, and low-performing schools being driven to improve through competition. A panel of experts brought together by the Brookings Institute to open up the ‗black box‘ of school choice, identified a number of factors that link choice options to student outcomes. From the administrative side of choice, these included student targeting, funding, performance measurement, parent information, student access, regulations, and accountability; and from the perspective of the individual, factors such as parents‘ preferences, student effort, school options, and teacher response were considered (National Working Commission, 2004). These factors are the reason school choice is hard to study. As the commission notes: Because so much depends on how these factors are combined and interrelated, choice is unlikely to be the panacea for American schools trumpeted by its advocates. It is equally unlikely to be the death of public support for American education, the fear of its detractors. There is nothing automatic about choice. The links between choice and its outcomes are not so mechanical that outcomes can be totally controlled or perfectly predicted. Choice‘s outcomes, for good or ill, depend heavily on how communities structure and implement it. (National Working Commission, 2004, p. 27) Highly responsive to competing initiatives at the federal, state, and local level, school choice arrangements are rarely implemented in the same way. One consequence of this variability has been the inability to conduct large scale, comparative research to determine the academic outcomes of each approach. Since IB programs are not a part of

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the official curriculum, the IB is often adopted in the context of school choice, as a program designed to distinguish the school from its competitors. Literature on the IB as an external agent of change is often positioned within the school choice movement. The Debate Peter Cookson (1994) describes the drama over school choice as a ‗moral struggle of genuine significance‘ over which the ‗very soul of American education is at stake‘ (p. viii). And like all passionate struggles, it is a drama that plays out between competing ideologies whose perception and presentation of the context is complicated by its subtext. Representing a mixed bag of thinkers—Social Reconstructionists on the Left; marketoriented reformers on the Right—their contradictory calls for alternative forms of schooling have shaped the present debate. In this way, the goal of school improvement has become a battleground between competing political agendas. Inspired by the turbulence of the 1960s, each of these advocacy groups argued that they wanted to rescue schools from the deadening effects of de facto segregation, seeing school choice as a different form the same ‗civil rights‘ inherent to their constituencies; and both lay claim to particular modes of freedom as feature of the State. At first, led by the radical experimentation of cultural critics in the 60s and 70s, reformers sought to change schooling to better reflect a new order defined by secular ideals. And though these reforms remain relevant today, the movement was ultimately subsumed by a conservative backlash, who ‗began to question the viability and advisability of using a public school system as an instrument of court-mandated racial integration‘ (Cookson, 1994, p. 29). As a result, fueled by a belief system that commodification and the good life were uniquely compatible, conservatives installed an infrastructure predicated on marketinspired models. Milton Friedman (1962) is credited for his early criticism of bureaucracy as the main culprit for unequal access to quality schooling. Chubb and Moe (1990) have

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continued that critique by suggesting the embedded power relations of interest groups have seriously hindered its ability to effectively and efficiently reach those with little power, such as low-income families. Taken together, the crux of their critique suggests replacing the current system with an educational marketplace; indeed, ―this view holds that these monopolistic conditions stifle both diversity of educational approach and educational excellence‖ (Lauen, 2008, p. 205). By reallocating its resources through perpupil funding formulas and vouchers, and breaking the bureaucratic monopoly, the consumers‘ well-being would be restored through competition and innovation. However, according to Carnoy (2000), Friedman‘s solution does not really answer the question of quality, as the business model for improvement speaks more to the bottom line than it does to betterment (see also Cuban, 2006). Green et al., (2010) explained how the positions outlined by both advocates of excellence and equity can co-exist, even as the implications for the design of choice systems are disparate. The economic, social capital, and innovation theories of choice anticipate beneficial consequences from choice for students in general. For the economist, competition provides incentives to improve all schools. For the social capital theorist, schools of choice create social networks that serve all students. For the advocates of innovation, having multiple autonomous providers of education programs allows new and potentially more productive models of education to be developed and tested under fire. In contrast, the equity rationale for choice expects the benefits to flow primarily to disadvantaged students—schools may not get better but access to them is fairer. (p. 6) Much of the dissent over school choice is about who really is served by the prospect. And because the main political argument for choice today is based on increasing these options for the underserved (typically low-income, inner city minorities), the implicit value of ‗more for less‘ is problematic, as school choice tends to shift much needed money away from this demographic. Complicating the case further is the ultimate outcome, as School Choice has mainly benefited Whites fleeing integration. Critics of school choice programs argue that market-based reforms not only helps the haves, but

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further handicap the have-nots. As Connell (1998) states, ―market reforms do not tend towards social justice‖: Simple local markets aside, the commodification of education does not eliminate the social hierarchies that created the problem of social justice in education. Rather, commodification changes the way inequalities are expressed, and eliminates some of the most important strategies for challenging them… Though the precise effects vary from locality to locality, the broad effect is to increase social stratification between schools. The main beneficiaries are the already privileged – families with money, know-how and mobility. (p. 93) According to Cookson (1994) the first choice schools were ―white flight‖ academies, which only served to further social divisions, and in effect create two societies. ―If anything, private choice has traditionally responded by ignoring or even exacerbating class, racial, and ethic segregation and inequality‖ (Carnoy, 2000, p. 16). This is true especially when transportation is not readily available. In a study of three choice programs in San Diego, Koedel et al (2009) noted that when a district with an open enrollment program did not provide transportation, it further segregated the district‘s schools, as low-income non-White students without access to busing were precluded from participation. As a result, far fewer poor students exercising choice. Similarly, in their comprehensive study of open enrollment in the Boulder School District, Howe and Eisenhart (2000) suggested that lack of free transportation ―creates an insurmountable obstacle for all of those wishing to take advantage of open enrollment,‖ but who cannot provide their own (p. 18). Ultimately, either by design or default, studies of open enrollment generally suggest that far fewer poor students exercise choice when transportation is a factor. Advocates of choice have forcefully argued that a neighborhood-based enrollment policy does not give parents the opportunity to find a school that has a better fit for their child‘s educational needs. Lareau (1989) has sought to inform the discussion by showing how a cultural divide between teachers and poor parents is a barrier to school improvement. Therefore, allowing schools to recruit parents with similar educational

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approaches will help create greater parsimony. Furthermore, others have suggested that the alignment of educational values among staff, parents and students may produce more functional learning communities (Coleman and Hoffer, 1987; Kane and Staiger, 2007). It follows then that ―choice has the potential to raise parent satisfaction, student engagement, and improve the incentives that influence school leaders‖ (Lauen, 2008, p. 206). Based on a several studies about the types of students who exercise choice (e.g., Buddin et al., 1998; Coleman et al., 1993; Goldhaber et al., 1999; Lankford et al., 1995; Witte, 1993), Cullen et al. (2005) explained that there is ample evidence to suggest how typical participants in choice programs are both more able and more advantaged. As such, the research suggests that ―choice schools increase social class and ability segregation across schools by siphoning off higher achieving and higher income students‖ (p. 732). Kane and Staiger (2005) argue that once the strong students have gone to high-performing schools, neighborhood schools are left with a ―local monopoly‖ over the weakest students left behind, which further depresses any efforts for improvement. And because parental preferences are key to the ‗equilibrium‘ experienced in choice districts—where poor parents look for proximity over academics while the reverse is true for rich parents—they also conclude that ―the disparate competitive pressure across high and low performing schools may result in a two tiered system‖ (p. 36). Similarly, Lubienski (2005) examined choice policies and patterns in a metropolitan area in order to analyze the factors affecting the districts‘ program selection. The study noted that preferred school options, like the IB program, were less frequently adopted in districts near poor communities. In addition, the decision to open or close their boundaries was based on the neighboring districts relative status, as well as its proximity. Put simply, Lubienski argues that the closer a district sits to poor, inner city schools, the less likely it will be actively trying to attract students from that community. ―Thus, rather than seeing districts compete to attract students (and per-pupil funding) from failing

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schools, we are instead witnessing a process of districts targeting more preferred students—effectively ignoring the potentially lucrative pool of dissatisfied families (and per-pupil funding) in failing districts‖ (p. 331). Ultimately, Cullen et al, (2005) note how it is difficult to learn much about the degree of sorting that goes on, or the potential whole school effects that occur as a result of voucher and magnet school programs because of the limited number of students typically affected by voucher and magnet school programs. Alternatively, open enrollment initiatives have been examined where researchers have observed the impacts of more systemic choice. For example, O‘Brien and Murdoch (2000) looked at a districtwide school choice program, and compared the overall achievement data to several similar non-choice districts in the state and found that academic performance was higher in the open enrollment district. Similarly, students who opted out of their assigned school in Chicago were more likely to graduate than those who did not (Cullen et al., 2005), and students in Milwaukee, Michigan and Arizona performed significantly better after the introduction of choice programs (Hoxby, 2003). Program Selection According to Sperandio (2010), a number of factors influence a school‘s program selection, including community perceptions of the school needs, the programs ability to meet standardized measures and accountability requirements, as well as levels of support offered by the program developers. At the same time, program selection is more often than not dependent on the local context, making a schools choice more political than it is rational. Thus additional factors may also influence school program choice, such as ―the branding of the program and perceptions of its success in other schools operating it‖ (p.141). In an open enrollment situation, high-income students tend to gravitate toward those schools with the higher average test scores. Hence, schools‘ decisions about which programs they would like to adopt are influenced by the perceived effect of those

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programs on the school‘s general performance. Administrators know that this, in turn, has an effect on the type of students likely to be drawn toward the programs (Kane and Staiger, 2005). Sperandio (2010) analyzed the reasons for adopting an IB program by 336 schools from around the world over a 15-year period, as indicated on their applications to become IB schools. Among the twelve most frequently documented rationales given, a key distinction was found between schools that were looking at long-term improvement and those under pressure to improve academic outcomes. The former, operating in ‗optimum choice conditions‘, utilized the school‘s vision and mission to determine the best program; whereas, it appeared, the latter selected the IB ―based on their perceptions of the school‘s ability to interact with program features to effect rapid change‖ (p. 147). Spahn‘s (2000) case studies of three American high schools similarly found a range of factors influencing program choice, and the symbolic use of the IB brand was among them. Jimerson (2002) detailed the benefits a school was likely to incur by adopting the IB program in this way. Districts that gained students tended to expand field trips; add technology and foreign language classes; extend time for elementary music and physical education; increase the number of special education aides; and offer more extracurricular programs and specialized courses such as advanced math and science, drama, journalism, and creative writing classes. Some also added schoolbased social workers to their staffs. (p. 18) By way of contrast, and reminiscent of the scientific principle that ―every action has an equal and opposite reaction,‖ Howe and Eisenhart (2000) explained how schools losing enrollments—or the sending schools—ultimately experience the inverse outcomes of those schools that gain students. Thus, sending schools are believed to enter a ―spiral of decline‖ that follows some predictable patterns: They have relatively low test scores; they lose parental resources; and, due to decreased enrollment, they begin to experience cuts in resources from the District. Their test scores drop further; they lose

38 more parental resources, and so on. All along they are scrambling to find new programs to attract students, further complicating and intensifying their work. (p. 13) Describing the adverse outcomes of this trend in program selection, Hargreaves and Fink (2006) also found that when school administrators used the IB to attract open enrollment students, they ―ended up damaging its lower-status students as well as teachers who didn't enhance the school's image or mesh with its mission. But that wasn't all: [this] fatal attraction harmed students and teachers in neighboring schools as well‖ (p. 17). Market-Based Incentives Using evidence of organizational behavior in education, Lubienski (2005) analyzed marketplace incentives in public schools to challenge the theory that competitive pressures would promote innovation of educational processes. Rather than following the patterns that consumer-based reforms predict, ―many educational organizations engage to a remarkable and somewhat unexpected degree in marketing and other promotional activities having to do with symbolic management of a school‘s image‖ (p. 465). More specifically, Lubienski argues that when schools are forced to compete for students, as is often the case in an open enrollment context, resources can be diverted towards promotional efforts to improve the competitive position of the school, essentially ―short-circuiting‖ (p. 470) the innovation and improvement advocates of school choice anticipate. These unintended adverse effects are captured in the following scenario. Commissioned to evaluate an open enrollment option in the Oconomowoc school district, Kiger (2007) reports the negative impact the district has already experienced, as students were transferring out at an alarming rate. Losing 150 students in the previous year at a cost of nearly a million dollars in state aid, he noted that ―reversing this trend remains a top for district officials.‖ Having studied the strategies that schools gaining from their losses employ, he concludes that should the district move forward in finding a ―niche,‖ efforts to rebrand the school would involve a marketing campaign that ―emphasizes the

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academic and professional achievements of students, alumni, and staff‖ and communication initiatives highlighting ―upcoming facility construction, innovative programming, and small class sizes‖ (p. 15). Whether or not marketing schemes like these are the type of market-based innovations that reformers like Friedman envisioned is debatable; still, one thing is certain here: when funding is tied to enrollments, schools will look for ways to (re)attract students, and innovation is observable. Even as the report recommends this strategy as a means to an end, because the goal is the redistribution of students, and not necessarily school improvement, the scenario that Kiger describes appears to support criticisms of choice options like open enrollment. One additional outcome of competition is its potential to improve marketing practices rather than educational practices (Lubienski, 2005). Marketing can be used to improve the school‘s performance by appealing to specific audiences, such as families of higher-achieving students. In essence, schools can use specialized programs to define and redefine themselves through marketing, using symbols and images that appeal to a highly valued demographic. This way, schools may raise achievement not by improving educational processes, but by attracting stronger students, which can ultimately draw resources away from investments in quality (Lubienski, 2005). Schools looking to select a program that will provide them with a ‗niche‘ have forced program developers to carefully consider how responsive their product is to their clients‘ needs. The selection process, then, can be affected more by the potential of the program to attract students than by its educational merit (Sperandio, 2010). In these ways, the interaction between market-based incentives and program selection call into question the academic interests served by choice plans. Summary The school choice debate is driven by the question of whether school choice improves school quality. Proponents see choice as leading to competition which will

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generate an improvement of quality across the board, leading to a more even distribution of high-performing students in more schools. Critics of choice see an exodus of top students from low-performing schools, exacerbating between-school stratification (Kane and Staiger, 2005). It follows then that some see expanding school choice as an assault on the common school ideal, harming social cohesion by allowing students to resegregate along ethnic/racial preferences. Even so, Yin (2007) suggests that public school choice has drawn increasing policy interest because of its possible association with desired educational benefits at two levels: first, for the individual student taking advantage of choice (i.e., improved academic outcomes); and second, for the entire system, as market-based incentives and competition are expected to drive greater efficiency and innovations. In part, as recent studies on the IB consistently point to the social advantages and human capital that the IB offers its graduates, especially in postsecondary entrance, perseverance and attainment, efforts to use the IB for all remain strong. And though system-wide improvements are difficult to detect, there is some certainty about the benefits for those who exercise choice. Boyd et al. (2002) make an important distinction, applying perspective on the impacts that school choice was expected to engender. They report that ―While in theory, increased choice in education will lead to improvements in the overall public education system, most of the research conducted to date has focused on the impact of choice programs on the students participating first-hand in them‖ (30). Ultimately, a review of school choice outcomes by a panel of experts concluded: ―Existing research paints a mixed and complicated picture. Choice could indeed lead to the benefits its supporters expect, or the harm its opponents fear. If so, the effects, both positive and negative, are less certain and more situation-dependent than advocates on either side acknowledge‖ (National Working Commission, 2004, p. 23).

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The Present Study The use of the IB program has clearly gained momentum in the current educational context of school reform, which has researchers looking at a variety of issues from a range of perspectives. As this review of the related literature has revealed, an emerging area of study is presently looking at why the IB has migrated to urban settings (Conner, 2008), and how to improve its impact once it is implemented in these contexts (Mayer, 2008, 2010). The IBO has contributed its own narrative here, essentially combating the ―myth‖ that the ―IB programs are only for privileged students at privileged schools‖ (25th IBNA Conference, 2006, p.4). At the same, while this trend has garnered support from advocates on both sides of the E-quality debate, reformers are presently seeking to capitalize on the IB phenomenon. Much of this activity, however, has been focused on discovering ways to provide greater access to the program, essentially expanding its impact through increased participation. To this end, backed by foundations and the federal government alike, several studies supported by the US Department of Education, Advanced Placement Incentive (API) initiative have identified some of the challenges that Title I schools struggle to overcome (e.g., Siskin and Weinstein, 2009). The present study seeks to add to the research literature in two distinct ways. First, as the profile of the IB has grown, so too have claims about the value-added prospects for host schools that go beyond program design. Though clearly a part of its popular appeal, the notion that the IB benefits non-IB students remains mostly unexamined. This dissertation focuses explicitly on these claims, adding insight where there is still mostly anecdote. Secondly, as noted above, the trend in research on the IB‘s expansion has focused on its implementation and impact in urban schools. These studies highlight a variety of factors that have kept inner city schools from fully capitalizing on these claims. Utilizing the lessons learned, as well as the pitfalls to be avoided, this study purposefully takes place in a decidedly different context.

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY Introduction The purpose of this study was to examine claims a school made about the benefits of the International Baccalaureate diploma program for all students at that school; in particular, for those who do not participate directly in the program. After a review of the literature, several propositions about the program‘s potential impact became clear, and these propositions provided a general framework that I used to formulate and refine the following research questions: 

What are the specific claims made about the IB program as a vehicle for school improvement?



How do administrators and teachers explain the benefits of the IB program for non-participants?

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To what degree do claims for effects of the IB program on non-IB students seem to be accurate?

To answer my research questions, I chose a site with an IB program, and interviewed selected school and district personnel whose functions intersected with the IB experience at various levels. The study also involved a careful review of documents, achievement data, and other educational artifacts. In these ways, this qualitative study focused on a single school with the goal of exploring evidence as it emerged in the research process. This chapter provides an overview of the case study research design and methods employed to complete this study. I also provide details about the sample selection, data collection procedures, and the analytical approach used. Finally, I address issues of validity and reliability, as well as my role as the researcher.

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Rationale for Research Design The purpose of any research design, as well as its usefulness, is dictated by the nature of the research questions. The substance and form of these questions, Yin (2003) explains, guides the researcher in selecting among methodological approaches best-suited to the purpose of the study, and that ―in general, case studies are the preferred strategy when how or why questions are being posed, when the investigator has little control over events, and when the focus is on contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context‖ (p. 1). Merriam (2009) agrees with Yin, adding that qualitative studies are often undertaken because ―there is a lack of theory or an existing theory fails to adequately explain a phenomenon‖ (p. 15). Furthermore, when the researcher is primarily interested in exploring a topic where little has been written, Creswell (1994) argued that conducting a qualitative study allows the researcher to listen to informants and to build a picture of what is taking place based on their ideas. After surveying studies about the IB in schools, and finding that despite the lack of empirical evidence, claims about the IB program were becoming more frequent, I determined that building such a picture was both timely and potentially useful. Until data is collected on student outcomes in a systemic way, qualitative research into these claims could help inform theory and identify areas for such data collection. To conduct such an inquiry, given these considerations, a single-site case study was selected as the most appropriate research design. Case Study Approach As a special type of qualitative research, Yin (2003) called the case study an ―allencompassing method—covering the logic of design, data collection techniques, and specific approaches to data analysis‖ (p. 14). In a two-part definition, he discusses the logic of design as a primary consideration, and then proceeds to show how the design choice and the methods interact. In the first sense, as an approach, case study ―is an

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empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident‖ (p. 13). Here, the emphasis on contextual conditions was a particularly important point in choosing case study methodology. Unlike other research strategies, the case study postulates that such conditions are highly relevant to the phenomenon. This acknowledgement, even invitation to unknown variables, requires the researcher to select a case—or a ‗bounded system‘—where such ambiguity is likely to occur, and justify this choice. Accordingly, Yin (2003) argues that because phenomenon and context typically interact, making them difficult to control, ―a whole set of other technical characteristics, including data collection and analysis strategies‖ (p. 13) demands consideration. In this way, the case study moves from the logic of inquiry to the procedural conduct of the study. Noting the particular qualities of the case study as a research strategy, Yin (2003) further refines his definition in the following way: The case study inquiry copes with the technically distinctive situation in which there will be many more variables of interest than data points, and as one result relies on multiple sources of evidence, with data needing to converge in a triangulating fashion, and as another result benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions to guide data collection and analysis. (pp. 13-14) Providing an interactive space between the design and methods, what Yin successfully describes here is an iterative process—one that goes through a series of reflective and refining movements, building a framework with each pass. As an approach, the case study recognizes that the phenomenon one is seeking to understand cannot be divorced from the ‗contextual conditions‘ in which it is embedded, as these conditions are integral to understanding the phenomenon as a whole. And as I was interested in examining the claims that the IB benefits the whole school, given what the literature suggested, this descriptive framework was essential to both the conceptualization for this study, as well as its conduct. Taken together, these methodological characteristics were important

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because an exploration of the claims for whole school benefits is complex and shaped by myriad factors where ‗the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident.‘ Hence, as a comprehensive strategy, case study methodology provided a framework for the overall design of this study; and then, once the logic of the design was established, it allowed me to establish procedures for answering the research questions. The researcher is urged to establish that the phenomena under study are linked to the objectives of the research design. To provide ―construct validity‖, a case study must have clearly defined units of analysis (Yin, 2003), which are the product of understanding how to get information about the phenomena under study. In order to ensure that the case and its embedded units of analysis are purposefully linked to the original objectives of the study, case study methodology requires that the operational measures for the concepts being studied are selected appropriately. Put simply, as the area of inquiry is clarified, potential cases can be identified, which should contain units of analysis that in turn need to be identified and clarified. The result of maintaining this ‗chain of evidence‘ develops a case study that Merriam (2009) called an ―intensive, holistic description and analysis of a single unit or bounded system‖ (p. 40). A description of how and why the case for this study was selected, therefore, is a way to ensure that I have properly linked what I am exploring to where it could be explored. Sample Selection: The Case and its Qualifiers Selecting a sample occurs on two levels in qualitative case studies. First, the case to be studied must be selected; second, a sampling within the case needs to take place. Purposeful sampling was used to select the site for this study, as well as the units of analysis, once the case had been established. This technique is widely regarded as the most appropriate way to establish criteria for conducting case studies (Patton, 2002), and ―it is based on the assumption that the investigator wants to discover, understand, and gain insight and therefore must select a sample from which the most can be learned‖

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(Merriam, 2009, p. 77). Furthermore, unlike quantitative studies, such a process is not random, as the decisions made in narrowing the search for an information-rich case directly reflect the ‗purpose‘ of the study. Merriam (2009) also laid out the types of purposeful sampling, and how multiple factors contribute to the decision-making process. For this study, I used what Glasser and Strauss (1967) as cited in Merriam (2009) termed ―theoretical sampling‖, which begins the same way as purposeful sampling, but does not select the entire sample ahead of time. ―Theoretical sampling is the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next and where to find them, in order to develop his theory as it emerges‖ (p. 79). On both levels then, the sample selection process—the site selected for this study, as well as the participants within the case—followed these conventions. As stated earlier, the research design selected provided the logic to move from some basic assumptions towards establishing criterion in selecting a site for this study. In order to study the claims then, I first had to locate a school that had an IB program. Importantly, such a school had to be accessible in terms of proximity. And since there were no IB programs in Iowa (where the researcher lived and worked) at the time I undertook this study, I began looking for a school in a nearby state. This decision was made in part out of convenience, but also because the state selected had several mature IB programs, as well as a unique policy context that supported some of the claims at the core of this study. After selecting the state, I used a ―snowballing‖ strategy to further refine the search. This technique, Merriam (2009) writes, ―involves locating a few key participants who easily meet the criteria you have established for participation‖ (p. 78) with whom you ask questions relating to the study, permitting the researcher to create a pool of possible sites. To this end, I made a search of the IB in the state I chose, and in November of 2007 I initiated contact with a few individuals that provided me with several leads.

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In particular, I began communicating with the President of the International Baccalaureate world schools in the region. Among the stated purposes of this affiliate is ―To serve as a clearing house for speakers, ideas and materials relating to IB programs.‖ Following this lead through a series of correspondences, I was invited to attend a coordinators meeting at the state department of education on March 4, 2008. I was put on the agenda to introduce myself, and spent the rest of the afternoon listening to different break-out sessions. During that meeting, I also took notes on the agenda, which included calls for Postsecondary research in general, as well as specific case studies on program impact. This early fieldwork served as background for the overall focus of this study. It was at this meeting that I was able to establish a more concrete framework for selecting a site for this case study. In subsequent communications, I discussed various sites for a case study with this key informant. She sent me lists of coordinators for each of the IB programs in the state, as well as a map indicating their locations. From these I made a search of all the IBDP schools, examining their websites and any documents relating to their use of the IB as a means of improving the whole school. Having ―screened‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 78) the sites who met the basic requirements for consideration, I contacted all the schools that made whole-school claims, and eight of the thirteen coordinators expressed preliminary interest in participating in my research. Significantly, throughout this process it became clear that if I was interested in exploring why a school makes the claims, as well as how they go about providing whole school benefits, the site should be one whose context and conditions would give it the best opportunity to shine. My review of the literature involved looking at studies that examined how schools attempt to broaden access to accelerated learning opportunities, especially for minority students in Title I schools (Conner, 2008; Matthews and Hill, 2005; Museus et al., 2007; Ready and Lee, 2008; Siskin, 2007, 2008, 2009). Many of these studies shared a common thread: that is, it is both difficult for the school, as well as problematic for the program, to

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be a powerful source of change in these settings. For a variety of reasons—such as changes in leadership, high turnover of faculty, or lack of resources—these schools struggled to maintain a viable IB program. With a grasp of the challenges these studies presented, my logic going forward was to select a site where these problems might be minimized, which would allow me to investigate the purported benefits where they were the least restricted. Put another way, if any place should maximize the impacts of the IB, then it would be one with ample resources and a high-achieving student population at its base. Accordingly, the ideal site now needed to be one that was an inverse of a Title I school. In this way, the criteria for inclusion began to emerge. Not only did the site need to have an established IB program (at least five years in operation), but it should also make claims that the whole school benefits from the IB. Moreover, the school needed to be in a financial position to suggest how it is using its policy context to maintain the IB program to advance these claims. In other words, I required a school that was affluent and open, using the IB to improve the school across the board, and among the schools who expressed interest in my research one school in particular offered the greatest promise. After reviewing its website and documents pertaining to the strategic use of the IB, the case I selected was Choice High School (CHS); indeed, CHS was chosen because of its specific relevance to my research questions and the criterion established throughout the decision-making process. CHS, located in an upper-middle class suburb of the American Midwest, has been improving on its reputation for providing a ―world-class‖ education. Building on its strategic plan, the district administration has released annual statements showing progress and growth on most measures used to evaluate a school‘s performance; indeed, attendance rates, graduation rates, standardized test scores have all been on the rise. At the same time, participation in accelerated coursework has experienced exponential

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growth, which has essentially doubled the number of national merit scholars each year. These improvements have had widespread impact on the school‘s standing as well. In 2008, for example, a press release illustrates another measure where CHS has been become nationally competitive. Using the Newsweek Index that ranks the countries ‗elite‘ high schools, as indicated by the numbers of AP and IB exams taken, CHS shows its dramatic climb.

Figure 2: CHS National Newsweek Ranking 2003- 2007

Based on the 2009 numbers, moreover, CHS proved to be even more impressive, jumping more than 200 spots to reach #285. Taken together, CHS has become an attractive symbol of excellence, earning the attention and accolades in the media and among educators and policymakers across the region. And while all these trends have provided the school with good publicity, this site was selected as the subject of my study for how it has advertised its educational services for everyone who chooses to attend. Once the site had been selected, I moved to the second level of sampling. This process was similar to the one used for selecting the case, as it required a combination of

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purposeful and theoretical sampling strategies. Unless the researcher, as Merriam (2009) points out, plans ―to interview all of the people in the case, or observe all of the activities, or read all of the documents associated with the case‖ (p. 267), the researcher must determine the criteria to select the sample within the case itself. In doing so, the selection of people to interview, the activities to observe, and the documents I read, had to relate to the purpose of the study. According to Yin (2003), these embedded, sub-units are critical in conducting case studies, even if they are not entirely evident at the outset. As the selected site emerged from the constant review of relevant literature on the phenomena, so too did the sample criteria for inclusion. When contacting people to interview at the district or school, I determined in advance that they should have specific roles working with the IB. For administrators inclusion was obvious, as they are by necessity in charge of directing, managing and supervising the quality of program delivery. With faculty and staff, I decided that a necessary condition would be participation in the IB professional development, which is required by the IBO to teach IB courses. These basic assumptions provided an assurance that the interviews could proceed according to the research design. Evidence gathered from other data sources were collected and reviewed in this way as well. Once the data points are selected and justified, Yin (2003) suggested that setting up data collection protocol is a necessary feature of credible case study. The details of these procedures are explained in the next section. Data Collection: Multiple Methods Merriam (2009) argued that data collection in qualitative studies is a misnomer because ―data are not ‗out there‘ waiting‖ to be collected; rather ―the specific information to be considered data in a study are determined by the researcher‘s theoretical orientation, by the problem and purpose of the study, and by the sample selected‖ (p. 86). For this case study, data were collected through interviews, informal observations, and document

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analysis, which are among the most common strategies utilized in case studies (Merriam, 2009). And since data collection, like the research design and sample selection, was a recursive and interactive processes, each of these strategies incorporated, informed, and led to subsequent sources of data. Besides providing a more holistic view of the phenomenon being investigated, this multi-method approach allowed for triangulation, so that the study would be conducted ―in a manner encouraging convergent lines of inquiry‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 36). In this way, I began data collection at CHS in Fall 2009 and completed collecting data in Spring 2010. Much of the preparation for site visits was done in the months prior to each site visit, which occurred in December 2009 and April 2010. Interviews In qualitative studies, the interview is considered a key data collection technique and source of evidence, allowing the researcher to ask focused questions, provide space for elaboration, and probe further in new areas that may not have been anticipated (Yin, 2003). Merriam (2009) noted that a common practice for deciding which type of interview to use is determining the amount of structure to explore the line of inquiry set out in the research design. Because my purpose was exploratory in nature, all interviews were conducted in a manner that had attributes of both the unstructured and semistructured variety. The interview protocol, therefore, was developed with a general list of questions and issues to be explored. There was no predetermined wording or order to these questions, and I was mindful to allow the participants to offer insights into the areas I had not considered prior to the site visits. ―This format allows the researcher to respond to the situation at hand, to the emerging worldview of the respondent, and to new ideas on the topic‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 90). In addition to selecting the type of interview structure, Merriam (2009) identified four kinds of questions that I used during data collection, which included: Hypothetical questions, Devil‘s Advocate questions, Ideal

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Position questions, and Interpretive questions. A brief description of each should provide insight into how and why these questions were utilized for this study. In posing hypothetical questions, the researcher asks what the respondent might do, or what it might be like in a particular situation, using suggestive prompts like ―what if‖ or ―suppose‖. This type of question was useful in many of my interviews, as I often tried to get my interviewee to imagine scenarios that would alter the status quo—for better or worse—in order to elicit reflections on what might help or hinder the utility of the IB program for the whole school. For example, I asked many interviewees to think about the possibility of ―IB for all,‖ and what that might look like, how they might respond, and whether or not they thought that this would be a good situation. In asking devil‘s advocate questions, the respondent is challenged to consider an opposing view or explanation to a situation. Similar to a hypothetical, these questions challenge the respondent to respond to an alternate scenario, which is especially useful when ―the topic is controversial and you want the respondents‘ opinions and feelings‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 97). In this way, using my knowledge of research on IB and experience as a teacher, I could cite examples of studies and relate situations where what appeared to be the case might actually be more complex (even adverse) than the interviewee has suspected. Besides being a good practice in testing and challenging myself throughout the course of this study, when carefully crafted, these questions served to shake up static notions and create thoughtful reflections in the interviewees as well. Indeed, I was unusually cautious in using this technique, as it was not my intent to pose these questions in such a way that seemed to suggest that I was trying to catch them in some coercive or malevolent scheme; rather, the goal here was to explore further what might be alternative and fertile answers to my research questions. The Ideal position questions ask the respondent to describe an ideal situation. For example, I often wanted to know what a perfect teaching assignment would be, and would ask teachers to describe such a position, and what circumstances would allow this

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vision to become reality. And since these questions have the potential to elicit both information and opinion, they helped me explore what each stakeholder desires in a given situation, as well as how and why it is not yet so. This line of questioning has the potential to reveal both the positive and negative aspects of a phenomenon, and since I was interested in documenting a whole picture of the case here, I employed this technique with every subject in the study. Interpretative questions allow the researcher to ―advance tentative explanations or interpretations of what the respondent has been saying and ask for a reaction‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 98). In a sense, these questions serve as a real-time member-check, enhancing the trustworthiness of the data; they also provide the interviewees with an opportunity to focus on their own reasoning. For example, I would often summarize several threads of a conversation, and ask, ―so given that you think assessments are important, but that class size interferes with administering valid measures, is it therefore your opinion that the IB program has a negative impact on students who are not being tested this way?‖ Responses to interpretive questions also had the effect of advancing much further than the original question, which helped complete thoughts that might have been left unfinished had I simply moved on to the next item on the list. Interview Protocol I used email to contact potential subjects, describing the research goals and requesting their participation through informed consent. Once I received confirmation, I created a scheduling matrix and notified the participants of the interview date, time and place. For the majority of the interviews, I secured the use of the IB coordinator‘s office as a neutral site for conducting our conversations. The IB coordinator‘s office was located in the guidance wing of the school, and this location permitted teachers to be a part of the study with confidentiality. Only one teacher chose to have me conduct the interview in the Social Studies department main office. In the rest of my sample, the

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participants had their own offices where we were free to discuss the study at their leisure. In this way, two interviews took place in the district‘s main building where the Superintendent and the Testing and Assessment Coordinator had their private offices. The two guidance counselors were interviewed in their offices as well; and so too were the Principal and both Assistant Principals. One teacher had a private office off her classroom in the science wing, and I met her there on two occasions over the course of the school year.

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Table 1. List of Key Stakeholders Interviewed Title Date District Administration Superintendent of Schools

December 2009

Testing and Assessment Director

December 2009

District Open Enrollment

April 2010

School Administration Principal

December 2009

Assistant Principal

December 2009

Assistant Principal

December 2009

IB Coordinator MHS

December 2009 and April 2010

Guidance Councilor

April 2010

Guidance Councilor

April 2010

School Faculty (By Subject area) and level IB Teacher (English) All IB and AP

December 2009

IB Teacher (English) All IB and X

December 2009

IB Teacher (English) Former IB—now G

December 2009 and April 2010

IB Teacher (History) TOK/AP History

December 2009 and April 2010

IB Teacher (History) Remedial and X

April 2010

IB Teacher (History) All IB and AP

April 2010

IB Teacher (History) IB and X and G

December 2009

IB Teacher (History) All AP/IB Economics

April 2010

IB Teacher (History) Psych/Soc IB and G

December 2009

IB Teacher (Science) All AP and IB

December 2009 and April 2010

IB Teacher (Math) IB and G

April 2010

With the exception of the five follow-up interviews, I conducted each by introducing myself and the study, using the letter of informed consent to review confidentiality issues as well as the use of a digital recorder. Interviews lasted between 30 minutes and 1 hour in length, although a few interviews went longer, and in couple of

56 instances they lasted more than 2 hours. All of the interviews were digitally recorded, as each participant gave his or her permission at the outset. In addition to capturing all the interviews on the recording device, I took notes in a fieldwork journal before, during and after each session.

Observations Observations constituted another source of evidence in this case study. And just as there is a range of interview strategies in qualitative research, ―there is also a range of structure in observation‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 120). Observations, therefore, can be formal or informal, and predetermined or unplanned. Additionally, there are several stances an investigator can assume when conducting observations, and the activities described in this section are best characterized as those of the ―observer as participant.‖ In this way, as Merriam (2009) noted: the researcher‘s observer activities is known to the group; participation in the group is definitely secondary to the role of information gatherer. Using this method, the researcher may have access to many people and a wide range of information, but the level of the information revealed is controlled by the group members being investigated. (p. 124) According to Yin (2003), less formal, direct observations ―might be made throughout a field visit, including those occasions during which other evidence, such as that from interviews, is being collected‖ (p. 92). For example, after I had conducted several interviews in the morning of my first visit, the secretary in the guidance department (with whom I often chatted) asked if I would like something to eat. As it was close to lunch time, and I was not scheduled to meet anyone for another hour, I was happy to accept such an invitation. She directed me to the snack room where several guidance counselors were already gathered over the bagels, cakes and coffee there. They greeted me, and I sat down to eat. They were in the middle of a conversation, so I sat back until they had finished when one of them looked at my visitor‘s name tag, and asked

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me how my visit was going. I explained to the group that I was a doctoral student from Iowa, who was there to study the IB at their school. We engaged in some casual conversation about the IB in general, which gave me a chance to ask what they thought about some of the ideas I was investigating. Each of them said that they thought the study was interesting, and proceeded to offer some commentary about their experience with the program. We happened to turn to the topic of the IB professional development when one of the counselors said that she had just returned from IB training a couple of weeks ago, and it was during this exchange that something I had not expected occurred. After she made the admission, she received quizzical looks from her colleagues, who apparently did not know she had gone to sunny St. Pete, Florida for a long weekend during the winter break. The fact that they did not know seemed to cast a pall over the snack room, and it suddenly got chilly. The counselor in question appeared to notice this too, and proceeded to downplay the situation, making excuses for such a possible gap in their knowledge. She eventually managed to change the subject, though not before I made a mental note of what I witnessed. I remember thinking right there that it was as if the other counselors felt slighted, and their cold curiosity expressed something that struck me. It made me immediately think that perhaps she neglected to tell her colleagues about her recent Professional Development because she did not want to be perceived by them to have gained favor, some privilege that they had not yet earned. Reflecting on it later, I made several notes about this observation, and it began to affect my thinking about the claim concerning the whole school benefits that were linked to IB training. I wrote down afterwards that it was not so much what she said, but how the others present responded, that made me think about the possibility that the benefits of such training might have unintended consequences. This observation deeply impressed me, and I decided to add this proposition to subsequent interviews. Perhaps more importantly, as I prepared for my April visit, I wrote this counselor to request her participation in the study. I wanted to follow up on this with her, and after she agreed, I

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asked her about it. As she was not able to recall clearly what transpired, I could not confirm my impression of the moment; and still, not only did this event give me a new contextual feature to examine, it proved to be a significant issue in the literature (see Finley, 1984), and among many teachers I interviewed. Other informal observations, such as ―the condition of buildings or work spaces will indicate something about the climate or impoverishment of an organization; similarly, the location or the furnishings of a respondent‘s office may be one indicator of the status of the respondent within an organization‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 92). These features of the case provided useful information throughout the study. For instance, I noticed on my first visit that there was a multi-million dollar addition to the school underway, which was the source of considerable pride during some of the interviews, especially when discussing it with the principal at CHS. Furthermore, a few months later when I returned for my second visit, the project was finished and I was impressed with the improvements. Likewise, on a few occasions, I had to track down some of the interviewees during their planning periods, who failed to appear at our scheduled times, and found them in their department office spaces. Another direct observation was occasioned when the IB coordinator asked if I would like to attend a parent night planned at the site while I was there in December. This opportunity allowed me to observe the marketing plug—or ―Dog and pony show,‖ as she described it—on the first evening of my first visit. At this event, I was provided with promotional materials and a PowerPoint handout that I used to take notes during the presentation. In addition, four IB students were a part of the presentation, and they were there to share their experiences, as well as field questions from the audience. Close to 50 parents were in attendance, and from the various exchanges I came away with unexpected insights into the school‘s outreach efforts, as well as further ruminations while the parents asked their questions. Some of these thoughts entered into subsequent conversations during several interviews.

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Ultimately, because ―observations take place in the setting where the phenomenon of interest naturally occurs instead of a location designated for the purpose of interviewing…[and] observational data represent a firsthand encounter with the phenomenon rather than a second-hand account‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 117), this data collection strategy provided some useful information for this study. Observations in this study, unlike the interviews, were not predetermined. And still, though they were informal, I was prepared to take advantage of any opportunities to notice various conditions during each site visit. Taken together, these observations were recorded in my fieldwork journal, adding another layer to this case study. Documents In reviewing documentary evidence, I chose to utilize Merriam‘s (2009) ―umbrella term‖ (p. 139) to cover the types of documents used in this study. These included public records, personal documents, and physical material already present in the research setting. Indeed, as Merriam (2009) aptly explained, documents are particularly relevant because they were not produced for the research purpose. Therefore, even as ―they often contain much that is irrelevant to the study; by the same token, they can contain clues, even startling insights, into the phenomenon under study‖ (p. 149). To this end, Patton (2002) argued that data mining from documents is valuable ―not only because of what can be learned directly from them but also as stimulus for paths of inquiry that can be pursued only through direct observation and interviewing‖ (p. 294). Sorting through the documents then—noting the clues while dismissing extraneous information—became the essential task in employing this tactic. And because the quantity of documents was vast and wide-ranging, I established criterion for inclusion here in much the same way I did in selecting the case and the participants. Reviewing documents not only played a central role in selecting the case for this study, it ultimately shaped the conduct of the study. Updated and archived information

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about the case was accessed on a regular basis through the school‘s website, which contained both a searchable archive as well as an RSS feed that served up newly minted promotional material almost daily. In addition to these materials, I also utilized ―researcher-generated documents‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 149), which were the product of various requests I made from the IB coordinator and the Director of Testing and Assessment. These included IBO printouts indicating a variety of quantitative data, which did not exist in a form or place I had access to at the time of the study. Furthermore, Yin (2003) suggested that ―for case studies, the most important use of documents is to corroborate and augment evidence from other sources‖ (p. 87). Where data collected from interviews and observations are subject to the researcher as the primary filter, documents are considered a viable way to check researcher bias and contextual accuracy of the case being studied. Documents are therefore considered stable sources of information, which can be retrieved and reviewed repeatedly. Consequently, the value of using documentary evidence cannot be overstated, and ―because of their overall value, documents play an explicit role in any data collection in doing case studies‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 87). Data Management After collecting data from multiple sources, the first step I took to prepare the information for analysis was to create a database, or a case record. Patton (2002) described the overall concept of this activity in the following way: The case record pulls together and organizes the voluminous case data into a comprehensive, primary resource package…[it] includes all the major information that will be used in doing the case analysis and case study…[here] information is edited, redundancies are sorted out, parts are fitted together, and the case record is organized for ready access…[indeed] the case record must be complete but manageable. (p. 449)

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The purpose and value of the case record is that it allows the researcher to locate specific data during intensive analysis (Merriam, 2009). In setting the stage then, I brought together and organized it with representative identifiers. I created a folder on my personal computer for this task, which contained several subfolders, added as the process unfolded. These structures allowed me to store and retrieve the evidence in an orderly manner. For example, reflections written immediately after each visit were typed and filed in a folder called Fieldwork. Likewise, documents collected were categorized and put into relevant folders; and as I began transcribing, I labeled each document by interviewee, date and time, in folders representing the site visits. I used the DDS player software that came with my digital recorder to manage this process. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, capturing all the information. I placed index marks where the exchanges were particularly nuanced and insightful. Significantly, as I prepared for analysis, creating the case record not only helped remove the physical and mental clutter, but it provided me with another opportunity to become more familiar with the data. Data Analysis According to Merriam, qualitative data analysis should not only be conducted along with (and not after) data collection, but ―all data analysis is inductive and comparative in the service of developing common themes or patterns or categories that cut across the data‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 175). Yin (2003) argued that the ―most preferred strategy is to follow the theoretical propositions that led to your study,‖ (p. 112) as the original objectives and design of the study, like the research questions, reviews of the literature, and new hypotheses or propositions, are presumably based on them. For this study, the general analytic strategy in dealing with the data was to examine the extent to which plausible arguments could be made regarding any relationship between the claims for whole school benefits and any contextual factors of the case that may promote or limit subsequent educational outcomes. This involved ―thinking about rival explanations‖ (p.

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113) throughout the course of the study, and ―developing a case description‖ (p. 114) that allowed me to identify and describe the patterns of complexity at CHS. In one sense, data analysis took place throughout the case study research process as I continually interacted with the data collected and the participants. As flexibility of design is considered one of the advantages of case study research (Yin, 2003), I engaged in new lines of inquiry when they were suggested by interviews, observations, or a piece of documentation. In another sense, data analysis took place once the bulk of the data had been collected, reviewed, categorized and manipulated. At this stage, the main analytic tools I used were pattern matching and explanation building. During the pattern matching phase, I identified particular themes in the respondents' responses to questions. After I transcribed all the interviews from both site visits, I printed a hard copy of each and then read them through, carefully noting any emergent themes in the margins of the texts. I set up a color-coding scheme for each interview in order to keep track of the transcript selections that I copy-pasted into new Word documents, where information relating to various themes could be further processed. As I worked through each interview on Microsoft Word, I used the review function to add comments for the initial phase of coding. I also printed a final copy of each transcript (without comments) in order to read each again, making notes and citing connections in the margins. Having repeatedly reviewed the transcripts, it became clear that there were significant areas where responses converged, and the analysis occurred as I looked for logical ways to compare and contrast them. To ensure the construct validity of this process, I continually asked whether or not such category constructions were responsive to my research questions. The explanatory phase followed, and it revolved around linking the participants‘ answers to the questions about the claims that the IB provides whole school benefits. To this end, after several issues relevant to my research questions were noted, I sorted them into documents so these exchanges could go through more restrictive and refined coding

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and consolidation. Through each wave of analysis, I looked for relationships between themes, and merged them into more focused hierarchies to facilitate the process, which allowed me to move from the general to the particular with each analytical pass. In this way, once the data were sufficiently categorized, they were arranged into findings ―in order to convey a holistic understanding of the case‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 204). The findings from the case study are presented in narrative form in Chapter IV of this study. Quality Control: Validity and Reliability Broadly speaking, in the social sciences, research focused on discovery, insight, and understanding from the perspectives of those being studied, lends itself to qualitative strategies (Merriam, 2009). As a research paradigm, the philosophical goals of qualitative research were succinctly summarized by Patton (1985) in the following way: Qualitative research is an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the interactions there. This understanding is an end in itself, so that it is not attempting to predict what may happen in the future necessarily, but to understand the nature of that setting…and in the analysis to be able to communicate that faithfully to others who are interested in that setting…The analysis strives for depth of understanding. (p. 1) Taken together, the value(s) of qualitative research given here are substantially different than those utilized in quantitative, experimental studies, which seek to control and isolate variables that might interfere with the investigation, using deductive reasoning to provide explanations. In this way, rather than taking existing knowledge and reducing it to some conclusion, a distinctive and salient feature of qualitative research is its inductive approach to discovering meaning. Thus, the qualitative ‗explanation‘ intends to accurately describe how and why certain variables interacted in context, accounting for multiple possibilities through multiple perspectives. Such complicity with the context of the study is among the most distinct features of the qualitative paradigm, and it required the researcher to maintain a set of assumptions in its conduct.

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Merriam (1988) as cited in Creswell (1994) noted six assumptions associated with qualitative research: 1. Qualitative researchers are concerned primarily with process, rather than outcomes or products. 2. Qualitative researchers are interested in meaning, how people make sense of their lives, experiences, and their structures of the world. 3. The qualitative researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and analysis. Data are mediated through this human instrument, rather than through inventories, questionnaires, or machines. 4. Qualitative research involves fieldwork. The researcher physically goes to the people, setting, site, or institution to observe or record behavior in its natural setting. 5. Qualitative research is descriptive in that the researcher is interested in process, meaning, and understanding gained through words or pictures. 6. The process of qualitative research is inductive in that the researcher builds abstractions, concepts, hypotheses, and theories from details. (pp. 19-20) The six assumptions helped guide my understanding of the research paradigm, and served as reference points throughout the research process. Given these considerations, I needed to ensure this research design was indeed the vehicle ―for getting from here to there, where here may be defined as the initial set of questions to be answered, and there is some set of conclusions (answers) about these questions‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 20). Choosing the path along the way involved several major decisions, which have been documented throughout this chapter. And still, having described these steps, questions about trustworthiness and transferability remain: 

Did this study look in the appropriate place(s) to answer the research questions?



Were inferences made mindful of the context?

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

Was the theory that guided my study adequate? Are my findings relevant? To what?



How well could this study be repeated if another researcher wanted to do so? Does it matter if their results are similar? Asking questions like these is one way to test a study‘s validity and reliability.

And ―because a research design is supposed to represent a logical set of statements,‖ I utilized certain ―logical tests‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 33) throughout the case study process. In this way, Yin (2003) recommended that these tests should be applied in order to assess whether or not a study has construct validity, internal validity, external validity, and reliability. The specific tactics available to case study investigators helped improve the quality of this research, and their application to this is summarized in Table 2. All of these tests, too, are detailed from the beginning of the chapter, barring one in particular—that is, external validity, or ―establishing the domain to which a study‘s findings can be generalized‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 34). Because the knowledge learned from this approach is ―more concrete… more contextual…more developed by reader interpretation….and based more on reference populations determined by the reader‖ (Merriam, 2009, pp. 44-45), the conclusions I would have the reader draw are less important than the manner in which I attempted to craft it. Even so, a brief discussion of my thinking on generalization follows.

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Table 2: Case Study Tactics and Responses Tests

Construct validity

Internal validity

External validity

Case Study Tactic

Research Phase in which tactic occurs

Action taken in this research

Use multiple sources of evidence

Data collection

Use of interviews, observations, documentary evidence

Establish chain of evidence

Data collection

Justified criteria for sampling and documented all procedures for data collection

Have key informants review draft case study report

Composition

Findings based on case study reviewed by key informants before publication

Do pattern matching

Data analysis

Patterns identified across units of analysis

Do explanation building

Data analysis

Some inferences identified in pattern matching

Address rival explanations

Data analysis

All claims identified were analyzed for alternative explanations

Use logic models

Data analysis

Some predictions and patterns over time were tested

Use theory within single cases

Research design

Analytical generalizations made to theory; thick description used

Use replication logic in multiple-case studies

Research design

Not used in this single case study

Use case study protocol

Data collection

Justified criteria for sampling and documented all procedures for data collection

Develop case study database

Data collection

Interview transcripts, documents, field notes and reflections, as well as links to online and physical artifacts entered into database

Reliability

Merriam (2009) explained how researchers have argued ―that since the general lies in the particular, what we learn in a particular case can be transferred to similar situations‖ (p. 51). By being particularistic, too, she added, ―the case itself is important for what it reveals about the phenomenon and for what it might represent‖ (p. 43). This

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feature, however, should not be confused with the ability to generalize in the statistical sense; rather, by focusing on the specific, and providing the details and logic of how conclusions were made, analytical generalizations are produced. ―In analytical generalization, the investigator is striving to generalize a particular set of results to some broader theory‖ (Yin, 2003, p. 37). The broader theory in my case study was based on the notion that the IB program has the potential to improve the whole school, addressing both academic excellence and equity simultaneously. Accordingly, I set out to study a school that made specific claims regarding its capacity to provide whole school benefits through the adoption, implementation and maintenance of the IB program. The results of this case study, therefore, will help qualify the theory that permits (or prohibits) this process in that setting. Through ―thick description‖ of the case, my goal was to provide the reader with enough detail to determine whether or not the findings could transfer to another setting. Ultimately, ―in qualitative research, a single case or small, nonrandom, purposeful sample is selected precisely because the researcher wishes to understand the particular in depth, not to find out what is generally true of the many‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 224). Role of the Researcher In qualitative studies, Patton (2002) submits that ―the researcher is the instrument. The credibility of qualitative methods, therefore, hinges to a great extent on the skill, competence, and rigor of the person doing fieldwork‖ (p. 14). In citing some commonly required skills for the case study investigator, Yin (2003) suggests that they: 

should be able to ask good questions—and interpret the answers.



should be a good listener and not be trapped by his or her own ideologies or preconceptions.



should be adaptive and flexible, so that newly encountered situations can be seen as opportunities, not treats.

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

must have a firm grasp of the issues being studied, whether this is a theoretical or policy orientation, even if in an exploratory mode.



should be unbiased by preconceived notions, including those derived from theory. Thus, a person should be sensitive and responsive to contradictory evidence. (p. 59, emphasis in the original) Significantly, Yin explained that when the last point about researcher bias is not

attended to—that is, if the case study is used as a way to substantiate preconceived notions—all the preceding conditions will be negated. And because the decisions are always up to the researcher, opportunities ―exist for excluding data contradictory to the investigator‘s views‖ (Merriam, 2009, p. 234). It is important to add, too, that whether or not the researcher is aware of certain biases, a credible researcher can still account for its potential damage to the study. Simply acknowledging that I understand the value of such accountability is among the first tests available to strengthen my ‗trustworthiness‘. To further protect this study from the harmful effects of researcher bias, it should be documented here how I came to this study, the assumptions that I brought to this research, and the strategies I used to account for my background experience. My interest in IB schools is rooted in my experience as a teacher in an IB school. For five years, I taught the IB curriculum at a Magnet School in South Florida. That school has been noted for its position in the community as ―blue ribbon‖ school—ranked #3 in the nation in Newsweek (Matthews, 2009)—and was hailed as exemplar in school improvement, especially in relation to its status as a majority-minority site. The idea that a school with declining enrollments, reduced funding and a dismal reputation could experience such a revival was inspiring to me, and I was eager to spread the news about what I was experiencing. Throughout my tenure, I noticed the leveling-up of feeder schools to align standards with the IB, and I felt the professional satisfaction of working in a school that had at its core what some researchers call an academic press (Hughes et al., 2005). Furthermore, having attended several annual IB workshops, I felt that it was

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possible to enhance teacher quality through the IB‘s commitment to professional development. From my point of view, having been in a position to teach across curricular tracks, the use of IB-trained teachers in non-IB courses appeared to significantly benefit those students. In essence, during this period, I became a ―believer‖ in high-quality curricula, and emerged as an advocate of the IB program as a way to improve schools; indeed, I was a firsthand witness to the ―spill-over‖ theory in one of the largest school districts in the country. My background and interest in the IB had its advantages. My past experience proved valuable, as it provided me with some of the initial credibility necessary to make key contacts with the IB regional association, which in turn granted me entry and access to the school selected for this study. Moreover, once I began collecting data, I was able to talk about the program itself, as well as relate to some of the contextual features of the case. According to Yin (2003), one of the principles underlying all good social science research is using ―your own prior, expert knowledge in your case study‖ (p. 137). However, as I began this study, I was keenly aware that my background and experiences in education would affect my assumptions—possibly even bias my results, reducing their trustworthiness. I also knew that I needed to establish that my prior knowledge would not serve as permission to omit contrary findings. For these reasons, it should be noted here how I came to understand that there is a difference in the kind of credibility that helped me gain access to the school, and the kind that shows the researcher has done everything to ensure the study results are credible. My background also exposed me to the problems of implementing an IB program in a school–insight that most external evaluators do not possess. To be sure, my interest and advocacy was never unconditional, as I was privy to the internal structural complications—such as recruitment, tracking, retention, support, and prerequisites for participation in the IB—which are central concerns in educational reform. How these conditions are treated (and negotiated) is at the heart of my desire to understand what can

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be done to maximize the impact of the program benefits as I experienced them, especially as efforts to expand access to them continue to grow. In other words, I was not simply interested in this subject so that I could promote and/or help reproduce it; rather, I entered this study wanting to understand better how it worked. For example, as I began thinking about the claim that IB benefits the whole school because IB-trained teachers also teach non-IB classes, I remembered why I initially thought that this would be an area of inquiry with considerable evidence… because that was my experience!

Indeed, the principal at the IB school where I last

taught had an explicit policy that split faculty assignments by level. As such, if you taught IB, then you would teach remedial courses as well. Accordingly, early in the research process, I clearly imagined this situation would be relatively common elsewhere (especially when the arrangement is claimed on the school‘s website). Even without such a policy, I figured it highly improbable that I would find teachers who only taught advanced courses. Yet, the deeper I went in the literature on tracking—and then teacher tracking—I began to see what was a glaring omission in my own rendering of the story. Because I thought the policy employed at my former workplace was good, I conveniently forgot that such a scenario was not the full version of affairs; rather, it was the one I preferred to recall, as it was partially true. In this way, I did teach a split schedule for a few years, but by the end of my teaching career there, I was actually only teaching IB courses. This revelation also made me wonder how this shift came to pass, which led me to develop questions that might uncover whether that was something that occurred in the IB school for this study. Such insights were a compelling feature and driving force throughout the study as well. I understood that everything in this case study—from its design to its findings— would be filtered through me. I was well aware, too, that having taught at an IB school, I had developed an affinity to the program benefits as I experienced them. And I also acknowledged that my study would be more credible if I was able to challenge myself to

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seriously consider rival hypotheses along the way (Yin, 2003). I found that this constant awareness and critical reflection actually strengthened the quality of the study, as it allowed me to revisit my experiences in a way that gave me new access to prior assumptions. Throughout the conduct of the study, therefore, I acknowledged my bias, and questioned each assumption made. In this way, even as several positive attributes of my experience as an IB teacher informed my conceptualization of this study, I remained earnestly aware of the value of conducting valid and reliable research. Summary This study used qualitative methods to answer the research questions. In particular, a case study methodology guided this study on two levels. First, it provided a pathway into a purposeful area of inquiry—the research design; and secondly, once the logic of the design was established, it required the researcher to establish procedures for answering the research questions. Therefore, in the same way that the scope of study benefitted from the case study methodology, so too did the technical considerations for data collection. As a whole, the case study methodology was not simply an evidencegathering protocol or a design model, but a comprehensive strategy in tune with the goals of this study. I used Chapter III to discuss the relationship of these goals in defining of the case and its context; indeed, in order to ascertain the extent to which the IB benefits the whole school, and whether or not they matched those predicted by the literature, I described the sample selection. Thus the main units of analysis were the claims about how the IB benefits the school, and the subunits, or data points embedded in the case (i.e., the interviews, observations, and documents) were described. I also explained that because the variables associated with these claims were unknown—and likely embedded in the context of the case—I chose to conduct interviews, look at documents, and informally observe events associated with the IB at a school that has made these claims. In this way,

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I discussed how the bounded system—the case, or CHS—was chosen, as well as the manner in which selected measures were identified. Having shared the procedures for collecting the data, I detailed the analytical strategies, which involved pattern-matching and exploring rival explanations. The power of this research design, as well as its limitations, were addressed. Throughout this chapter, I discussed the tactics employed to ensure the validity and reliability of the study‘s findings. I used multiple methods and maintained a chain of evidence in order to establish construct validity. By detailing how the study was conducted and how the findings were analyzed, I provided an audit trail, enhancing reliability—or, the extent to which there is consistency in the findings. And the extent to which findings can be generalized or transferred to other situations, or external validity, was established by providing a rich, thick description of the case. This allows the reader, and not the researcher, to transfer the findings to other situations. The question of internal validity—the extent to which research finding are credible—was addressed through triangulation: checking interpretations with individuals interviewed or observed, asking peers to comment on emerging findings, and clarifying researcher biases and assumptions. Ultimately, this study‘s methodology chapter was a review of how and why I came to this study, and an explanation of what I did while studying there. In the next Chapter, the results of applying case study methodology to CHS are presented.

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CHAPTER IV FINDINGS Introduction In an effort to meet the demands of providing excellent educational opportunities for all, schools are increasingly turning to the IB program. Among them, a growing number of schools who adopt the IB program promote it as a mechanism for scaling up the whole school—improving the school culture, increasing rigor, and ―raising all boats‖. And while the research on the IB is clear about the positive effects it has on those who participate in the program, little is known about how the program benefits those students who do not. The purpose of this case study was to explore claims that adding the IB diploma program will provide benefits for all students, even those who would not participate in the direct delivery of the program. The research questions that guided this focus were: 

What are the specific claims made about the IB program as a vehicle for school improvement?



How do administrators and teachers explain the benefits of the IB program for the non-participants?



To what degree do claims for effects of the IB program on non-IB students seem to be accurate? Once data were collected, I reviewed my field notes and interview transcripts, and

it became clear that there were two apparent avenues the school followed in producing whole school, shared benefits. Chapter IV is therefore divided into two sections, each representing an explicit claim made by the school in their promotional literature, and how these claims were discussed in the interviews. This two-part division provides a central structure for detailing the findings of this study. Within each section, a series of narratives is arranged to present explanations that provide support for these claims, as

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well as those that were inconsistent with the school‘s stated goals. Accordingly, section I explores the claim that IB benefits the whole school because it is expected to positively impact enrollment, providing more resources and expanding rigorous educational opportunities. Section II examines the claim that IB benefits the whole school because teachers with IB training also teach non-IB courses, which improves the quality of education for non-IB students. And though the individual claims are not entirely independent, presenting the data in this way helped establish some of the interactions that will be discussed in-depth in Chapter V. Section I Introduction Section I explores the claim that the IB program benefits the whole school because it is expected to positively impact enrollment. Because schools operating in an Open Enrollment context have to compete to attract students and remain financially viable, the first narrative provides the Strategic Planning that the district used to maximize its market share. Having established the domain of the claim, the second narrative reports on the financial advantages gained for the entire school when using the IB as a marketing tool. Subsequently, I detail the findings that pointed to IB‘s contribution to the school‘s improvements. In documenting these returns on its investment, the narratives that follow recount the explanations for the positive expectations and outcomes of using the IB (a symbol of excellence in education) to advance equity at CHS. In the last four narratives, descriptions of the accommodations and complications that emerged as a result of these efforts are presented. Strategic Plan: Following the Money As I reviewed documents at CHS for claims regarding the IB and its use for providing benefits to the whole school, several rationales emerged as key in the decision:

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the continuous improvement of the quality of educational services, attracting more families to the school district, providing an international flare to schools to encourage businesses to relocate to the area, and making the school desirable for families who have traditionally sought private schools. The District‘s Action Planning Team that was charged with determining the value of adopting the IB added that the recognition of the program by top postsecondary institutions would serve as a major selling point, enhancing the district‘s overall reputation (CHS, 2005, p. 6). Taken together, these documents presented the argument to decision-makers that even in tight financial times, it is important to maintain high-quality educational services for the benefit of the entire community. The principal at CHS underscored this sentiment, adding that as ―funds are getting shorter and shorter, we can no longer be sure that everyone gets their piece of the pie.‖ Instead, he went on to explain how in a district where schools must compete to keep students, there was one clear solution; rather than complain about the system, and the lack ―of good legislators, we have had to look for the best and the brightest programs coming out that are engaging kids, and fund those programs.‖ This perspective on open enrollment in relation to the IB at CHS was further enhanced given the financial forecast. According to the superintendent, open enrollment has provided an opportunity for the district to stabilize its finances in tumultuous times for school budgets. Summarizing the district‘s choices in its 2008-2009 Annual Report, he explained the scenario for its strategic plan in the following terms: In 2001, the School District was facing a future of declining enrollment, which for any district yields negative consequences: revenue falling faster than expenses, school closures and boundary changes—all elements that disrupt a community, anger parents and pit neighbor against neighbor. Instead of accepting this bleak future, the […] School Board adopted a plan to actively market and strategically grow enrollment: 1) attracting resident students who were attending private schools, 2) attracting relocations and home buyers and 3) welcoming open enrollment students. (p. 20) Significantly, as this assessment was made in 2001 when the superintendent was hired, so too was the decision to bring the IB program to CHS. During an interview, he

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acknowledged that his prior experience with the program, and the prevailing conditions in CHS—in particular, declining enrollments—provided the initial impetus for adopting the IB. He told me that when he was recruited, the school board at CHS visited the district where he was heading at the time, and they ―were convinced that we needed to do that, so it came with me basically.‖ The Principal at CHS also recalled how enrollment at that time ―was stagnated, and a lot of kids were going out of the school,‖ and agreed with the appraisal that promoted the plan. In this way, using the policy context to support initiatives, the superintendent described how he attempted to gain control of the situation, and the report goes on to relate how the strategy played out. Almost a decade later, he triumphantly declared: The plan has worked and [CHS] has reversed the declining enrollment projection. In 2004, there were 7,613 students enrolled; projected to fall to 6,538 by this school year. Instead in 2009, there are almost 8,400. The difference is $10 million annually, and the revenue from these additional students far exceeds the added cost to educate them. Because there is no increase in fixed costs (utilities, administration, infrastructure), the revenue exceeds expenses. That difference is used to benefit all students and residents of the District. It has also protected us from massive staff reductions and the closing of community elementary and middle schools. (p. 20, emphasis added) There was consensus among administrators and faculty at CHS that the IB program provided benefits to the whole school through Open Enrollment as well, all recognizing the practical nature of doing business and maintaining solvency. An assistant principal put it to me this way, acknowledging the superintendent‘s strategy: The whole idea is let‘s just control our enrollment, let‘s just be stable, and we are at that point. When you do that, you can sustain programs. When you are at the mercy of population swings, you can‘t sustain programs here; you are cutting, you are expanding, you are cutting, you are expanding. The plan to create greater revenue streams through open enrollment was widely considered a success, too, as it provided the district with funds to prevent cuts and stabilize operations. Teachers often credited careful management with keeping their jobs,

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and several noted how their colleagues in neighboring districts were recently laid off, or simply left teaching because of the new demands forced on them by budget shortfalls. In making these seemingly prescient moves, not only did the district succeed in stemming a tide that would adversely affect its schools, but the superintendent persuasively justified his decisions by showing how they actually reversed the district‘s fortunes. As Figure 3 indicates, at the same time that this strategy helped hold resident enrollments steady—keeping them from dropping further off, as projected—efforts to draw non-resident students made the actual enrollments trend significantly upward, which had the desired effect of taking future funding streams from eminent shortfalls towards solvency and surplus.

Figure 3. District Enrollment Trends, 2001-2010, Projected and Actual

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Perhaps even more germane, it is particularly important to notice when these trends stabilized in these data. Keeping in mind that the IB program was in its first full year of operation in 2004-2005, it is worth noting how from that period the district beat its own bleak projections, and did so in each fiscal year thereafter. According to district documents, these numbers are significant too; as such, the strategic plan clearly set out to do more than simply correct the budget. Detailing the cost-effective decision-making, the foundation for the claim that the IB benefits the whole school through Open Enrollment was clearly established. It is important to note that attracting open enrollment students into our District provides a benefit for all of our resident students. [Here], state funding follows the student. When a student enters and fills a seat in an existing classroom or program, the funding for that student (approximately $5,500) is new revenue for the School District; however, if the class or program is being held regardless of that student‘s attendance, the District incurs little to no additional cost for educating that student. In fact, if 30 new students enrolled, the District would realize over $160,000 in new revenue—much more than the $40,000 -$50,000 required to hire additional teachers for those students would cost. The additional revenue helps support other educational programs throughout the school and the District. (CHS, 2005, p. 7) Thus from the district‘s point of view, programs that help market its schools are linked to benefits for the entire system. To this end, it claims that the additional revenues go beyond the outlays required by the program developers, which in turn advances the agenda of serving both program participants, as well as those on its periphery. And when I asked the superintendent if this interpretation of his logic was sound, he said: ―Yeah, I think it is…other courses and programs help that too, but this certainly works that way. It helps us finance not only the IB program, but other things that we are doing.‖

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Marketing Advantage: The Signaling Power of IB Having the IB at the school, the superintendent argued, was a way to signal to the community at large that ―if you want a high quality and challenging program, you come to CHS.‖ According to the school principal, using the IB as a marketing tool was a central force in positively changing the school‘s fortunes. By branding the school with the IB logo ―in times of decreasing enrollment for everybody‖ else, he explained how this move allowed the district to ―actually advertise and say ‗come here, and here‘s why.‘‖ The benefits of such a strong advertising card could not be overstated, either. With enrollment for the 2009-2010 academic year at 2,850, he proudly predicted that ―we will probably hit 3,000 in the next year.‖ And the additional money that these open enrolled students brought could be ―used to educate all of our students, keep class sizes low and retain excellent teachers‖ (CHS, 2010, p. 6). Depending ―on what the numbers look like,‖ an assistant principal explained, determined the extent of the IB‘s impact. In other words, ―if it‘s one kid—because you are talking $7000 per year—it‘s not a real, significant resource transformation; if you are talking 30 kids, that‘s a whole different ballgame, we are talking classrooms there.‖ The value of the IB program was in this way linked to the number of students it attracted, which in turn was linked to school solvency. By extension, as the IB option attracted a significant number of students (and the state funds that follow) the school would be empowered to spend more on system-wide improvements that extend far beyond the financial obligations needed to maintain the program. By repeatedly making the case for its cost-effectiveness, the idea that the IB would continually provide the school with a reliable funding source emerged, especially as each year‘s bottom line showed improved stability and strength. For instance, the district‘s 2010 Annual Report showed how the strategy turned eminent deficits into soaring surplus, and how ―if only 10 new students enroll because they are interested in the IB Program, the program will have paid for itself.‖

80 These dollars have also enabled us to have unique and high quality programs, excellent teachers, and a positive atmosphere which, in turn, attract even more students. So, a strong cycle has been created to sustain our district for years into the future. The construction of 32 new classrooms enables the District to balance enrollment in our schools and provide opportunities for a strong future. And since the ―additional cost of the IB is less than $50,000,‖ such spending was often seen as negligible in relation to its ability to generate even greater revenues. District documents added that even though some ―children are too young to enroll in the IB Program,‖ the IB had already attracted enough open enrollment and traditionally private school families into the middle schools to justify costs associated with maintaining the IB. Furthermore, as this funding stream was only expected to gain momentum, it was conjectured that ―in coming years, the IB Program will attract more students into the school district, which will bring more funding into the school district.‖ Returns on the Investment The value of the district‘s aggressive marketing plan was supported by a variety of positive indicators, like its budget surplus that went to sustaining its status, improving facilities, and raising student achievement. Over the past five years, according to the school‘s 2008-2009 annual report, the strategic use of the IB program has resulted in:     

Increased enrollment in AP and IB courses Rising ACT and SAT scores Increased opportunities for co-curricular involvement and leadership Improved focus on community service More personalized post-high school planning

As stated earlier, the school‘s ability to make these improvements was attributed to the recruiting advantages established by adopting the IB. Suggesting that the IB ―speaks directly to what we believe,‖ the principal explained how the IB has ―been a good boost for us.‖ Having an independent agency authorize and oversee its operations was seen as critically important for validating the school‘s efforts. The principal noted how ―it‘s great to have somebody that gives us

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curricula and the materials to evaluate learning outside of our expertise that we are responsible to‖ because it projected what he called ―the courage to step out.‖ Both willing and able to be held accountable to ―national and international standards,‖ submitting to external assessments allowed CHS to show a commitment to academic rigor. Such a stand, he argued, would raise the profile of the school, attracting students looking for excellent educational opportunities. Not only would they provide significant revenues that would benefit all students at CHS, but these high-achieving students would help transform the school‘s culture. Even as the school increased its size, the IB was also given credit for improving learning conditions at the school. Addressing what he called common misperceptions, the principal commented on several areas where CHS got better as it got bigger. In particular, charting the school‘s gradual, more subtle improvements, he pointed out how broad indicators, like daily attendance rates, improved as more students applied for a place at the school. The two keys figures that I see back then were we were at probably at 85% to 88% attendance, which for most schools is fine. And we were at about 2,300, maybe 2,400 in enrollment. In five years, we have gone to about 94% attendance on a daily basis, which is one of the strongest around, and we have added almost 600 students. Similarly, the conventional wisdom that attends open enrollment, the superintendent explained, was that more students at the school would inevitably lead to more students in each class. In an effort to set the record straight, not only was the district able to show how bringing in students helped prevent class size increases, the school actually experienced a drop in class sizes. Table 3 illustrates this point, as official school documents revealed how class sizes have been affected since the introduction of IB.

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Table 3. CHS Class Size 2004-2010 200910

200809

200708

200607

200506

200405

Language Arts

24.6

26.1

25.6

26.8

26.1

27.3

Math

25.9

26.1

25.8

25.9

28.3

28.6

Science

25.4

25.7

26

26.7

25.9

27.2

Social Studies

25.4

27.8

27.1

26.5

28.9

29.9

High School

In addition to building new classrooms to better accommodate the incoming student population, the conditions made possible by these revenues were also believed to support new social and academic norms. Many interviewees commented that the presence of the IB at CHS has promoted interest in advanced course-taking in general, which has led to increased academic performance across the board. One way this benefits the whole school, most administrators and teachers agreed, was through the raised expectations the IB purportedly provided the school. Essentially an outcome of the program‘s reputation, this phenomenon was believed to operate as part of its association with excellence. The superintendent commented on the growth of accelerated learning opportunities overall, noting how recent trends in participation tell the story. I think the rigor of the courses encourages more kids to take rigorous courses, whether they be IB or AP, and I think there is quite a bit of evidence where [CHS] really turned a corner on that—that rigor this past year—where kids are comfortable being challenged, they are comfortable with doing exceptionally well, as having that as their goal; and until then, we were still getting there. In effect, arguing that rigor begets rigor, the superintendent viewed the school‘s gradual assent as a natural outcome of its increased availability. In this way, the IB penetrates and improves the school‘s culture, which initiates incoming students with

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higher expectations, and encourages more students to attempt accelerated coursework. Highlighting the fact that ―we‘ve found that as IB has grown, AP has grown too,‖ an IB teacher also commented on the rapid growth of these courses, and suggested that as more students are looking to take advantage of the opportunities, ―students are pushing themselves more.‖ Another teacher took this sentiment further, suggesting that this trend ―raises the bar...and the more kids we have taking advanced classes, the more we working in the right direction.‖ As these courses became more ubiquitous, too, higher test scores were attributed to a positive shift in the school‘s culture. As such, an administrator argued that because ―student performance at the high school is going up across the board, the IB is certainly a piece of helping students begin to believe that they want to be challenged.‖ Using the surplus funds from the Open Enrollment students, the district was empowered to add to more than its academic offerings. Support services like ―the writing center, the college counselor, the whole new counseling model that came in four years ago‖ are further improvements that provide greater resources to the entire school population, which were attributed in part to the addition of the IB. Suggesting that the substantial reduction in the number of students per counselor ―from the [state] average of about 350 to 400 on a case load to closer to 250‖ was the result of attracting the additional funds from the students who open enrolled, the principal at CHS keyed in on the distribution of these resources. Accordingly, he explained how ―our size gives us a chance to have six foreign languages instead of just three. Plus our physical plant may be old, but it looks like a division three college; I mean artificial turf, dome, stadium, ice arena on site…so we really stand out in the community.‖ These additional courses, as well as the extra-curricular upgrades, also served to enhance the school‘s reputation, further expanding its marketability. To summarize, the value of the school‘s aggressive marketing plan was supported by a variety of positive indicators that were linked to whole school benefits. In particular, the budget surplus brought about by the marketability of IB went to enhancing the

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school‘s status, improving facilities, and expanding advanced academic opportunities. By flying under the flag of rigor, utilizing the signaling power of IB‘s reputation for high quality, the principal at CHS argued that ―what we didn‘t have before was the courage to step out.‖ The returns on this bold action were increased attendance, improved enrollment, enriched curricula, and enhanced facilities at CHS. Ultimately, the IB was credited with creating a cycle that would reinforce the district‘s strategic plan, further compounding these positive returns. Complications and Accommodations The IB may have been instrumental in improving enrollments at CHS, but the program‘s adoption was not without its share of complications and accommodations. Touted as a tool for benefitting the whole school through increased enrollments, the conflicting agendas that the IB engendered were evident in several areas. In the following sections I will explore how the IB program was reluctantly modified to appease its early critics, the contentious issue of test scores in relation to class size, as well as the concerns raised about the IB‘s potentially adverse impact on neighboring schools, including the limitations that open enrollment fosters among students with transportation needs. Initial Need versus Ultimate goal: A Diploma Program? Though the IB diploma program was originally designed as a comprehensive curricular model, the IBO allows authorized schools to offer certificate-level courses. Having a certificate option allows students to take a single IB course and earn a certificate based on the results of their exit examination. According to the IBO website, many schools typically choose to implement the IB as a certificate option when they initially lack the infrastructure to offer the full diploma. This is usually the case when a school needs to train the teachers for specific offerings, or the host school has yet to adjust their master schedule to accommodate the requirements put forth by the IBO for

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full authorization. In yet another scenario, a school might choose to offer the Certificate option when too few students are interested at the outset to make the IB courses run at politically sustainable levels. At CHS, it appears the certificate option was added for two main reasons. The first was pragmatic, as diploma-only students did not fill the classes; and the second was political, as the program costs could not be justified unless it showed that it benefits a significant portion of the students in the school. The Principal at CHS remembered the pragmatic need of more students for offering the certificate option: ―So, you know, in the first couple years to fill out classes, maybe we had 15 [diploma candidates] the first couple years. Well, it‘s difficult to run that small a class, but then we would bring in kids that just wanted a certificate and wanted to try it.‖ A veteran English teacher explained, certificate students help ―fill in the numbers,‖ so certain classes could continue to operate while the program became established. The political need to justify costs by benefitting the greater student population emerged when the origins of the certificate option were discussed, as it became apparent that this adaptation to the program was in part a response to ―red flags‖ raised by the school community. Several teachers explained how this change in program delivery served to quell some preliminary concerns about the IB at CHS that emerged early in the application process; indeed, one teacher remembered ―that there were a lot of questions initially when we were applying for the program: Was it really expensive? Will this only service a narrow sliver of students? Is anyone else going to pay a cost to be able to afford this opportunity for a select group of kids?‖ Another teacher confirmed this concession, noting how in an effort to address these concerns, ―one of the things [the coordinator] and the team of teachers decided was that we would offer [the IB] as a certificate, and not just a diploma-only program, perhaps so there would be this sense that it‘s not just a tight little community of learners.‖

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Adding the certificate option, though driven by pragmatic and political concerns, resulted with teachers and administrators embracing it nonetheless and highlighting its positive effects. The three main areas commonly cited were the sheer numbers signing up for these classes that added to its marketing advantage, the perception of greater access and equity, and the unexpected appreciation for the academic performance levels of the non-diploma students. In providing an enhanced marketing advantage, much of the school‘s promotional literature pointed out that there has been a substantial increase in the number of students with access to IB courses since its inception. As Figure 4 illustrates, the expanding student population included a rise in program participation in each passing year.

Figure 4: Certificate and Diploma Participation, 2006-2010

In this way, the certificate option exponentially increased the direct program impact to 10% of the total student population, which was far greater than the untenable 1% provided for without this modification. Pointing to the rising numbers of students enrolling in advanced coursework was part of the school‘s marketing plan, as these ever-

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increasing numbers helped signal that greater academic rigor was both directional for the school and possible for students interested in the opportunity. Keeping the program ‗open‘ to all students was lauded on several levels; indeed, the certificate option was seen as a way to raise academic expectations, increase rigorous course-taking opportunities, and encourage greater integration among IB and non-IB students. As one teacher explained, ―by being a certificate as opposed to being just diploma, we‘ve done great things. We‘ve done really good things…we have many more students experience this program than we would have.‖ Providing the certificate option, and expanding the number of students who successfully participate in IB courses, as one teacher explained, was a way to improve the school‘s culture. When people think it‘s normal for you to send kids to great institutions like that, everyone else starts to—it does pull everyone else up. And I think introducing an IB program, where you do allow—and this I think is critical—you do allow certificate kids, you do allow a kid to take one IB course so they can try IB courses. Similarly, several teachers referred to the certificate option as a way to broaden access to rigorous courses, allowing non-diploma students experience some of the IB advantages without committing to a whole program of study. A guidance counselor concurred, saying ― I think it‘s great that kids can mix and match, and take an IB along an AP, or whatever they like; that‘s the beauty I like about the certificate, just the ability [to sign up for a class].‖ Adding the fact ―that we don‘t close off that program to students‖ allowed the counselor to make the case that the school was addressing equity issues as well. And for some, it was apparent that maintaining the certificate option was considered relevant, if for no other reason, ―just so people can even get a taste of it.‖ At base, another teacher noted how ―it would be kind of sad if kids didn‘t have the option of taking [IB courses], even if they only want to take one.‖ This flexibility in design provided another IB teacher the opportunity to note how certificate students actually help bring the

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diploma candidates closer with the rest of the student population, as diploma candidates are already ―a little too incestuous and insulated by the senior year, something that is not fully a plus.‖ Having the certificate students, therefore, she figured at minimum ―was a good way to mix it up a little, so that every class isn‘t just that little cadre.‖ The ability of the certificate students to rise to the challenge turned out to be an unexpected result of expanding the IB program through the certificate option. An assistant principal commented how ―initially I think we had students that perhaps shouldn‘t have been there,‖ which was a source of consternation among the administrators at the time. The results on these early exams, however, brought about a shift in profiling. Acknowledging the possibility that ―eventually they‘d perform‖ the assistant principal continued, ―what we have tried to do is at least encourage students to at least to try it.‖ The fear that these students might jeopardize the marketability of the IB program with poor performances on the examinations was an issue that demanded consideration too. In presentation notes from school board meetings, the administration attempted to address the issue of program growth and its potential impact on test scores. For example, in a 2009 report on ACT, SAT, IB, and AP participation, the authors sounded a note of caution, explaining that ―as the IB program grows, more students with varying academic performance may be taking those courses. This may result in dips in performance in some areas‖ (p. 5). Laying the groundwork for some potentially unwelcome reporting, it became clear that the case they were making was in favor of permitting the program to continue expanding its reach. Despite the fact that ―encouraging all students to participate may mean that the overall percentage of students scoring three or above may drop‖ it was duly noted that ―based on the data, as more students take the assessments the scores do eventually improve‖ (p. 6). In the report‘s final analysis, the potential for improved academic performance to coexist with unfettered program growth is highlighted. In this way, ―as more students become accustomed to the rigor required in these courses, the

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effect should be mitigated. This is the first year where most scores are improving along with enrollments so this may be a new trend‖ (p. 7). Discovering that certificate students would not diminish the school‘s marketing power, efforts to support expanded access were sustained. Even as student numbers were trending upwards in terms of participation in IB altogether, and many agreed that such a scenario was both pragmatically and politically positive for the school, the administration and some faculty communicated a desire to see fewer certificates and more Diploma candidates. Throughout the interviews, the difference between the ideal and the real was articulated with an eye towards the future. When calculating the success of the IB at CHS, the administration consistently pointed out the gradual rise in number of students attempting to earn the full diploma. Generally seen as too slow, the rate of diploma expansion, alongside the idea that the number of diplomas awarded would add to the school‘s prestige, the principal took the lead in expressing expressed dissatisfaction with the current arrangement. Intimating that while the certificate was useful early on, he still counted CHS as not having enough diploma candidates. In his words: ―I‘d love to be up around a hundred; I don‘t know why we are not there.‖ His concern was clear too, even though the strategy was not. Instead, projecting sustained growth in IB enrollment, an assistant principal revealed the administration‘s desired direction; at least ―in terms of the thinking, we would like to see more students involved in the diploma piece, fewer doing it as a certificate. I know that has been [the IB coordinator‘s] intent that we should be full diploma.‖ Explaining why he was ―a bigger fan of the diploma program,‖ one administrator unfavorably likened the certificate option to the AP program, ―which is the smorgasbord where you just pick and choose; whereas with IB, you should be doing the full thing.‖ Accordingly, the fact the IB was designed as a ―program of study,‖ the full IB experience was more important than getting a taste of it through the certificate; thus ―the CAS hours, the paper, all those pieces, that‘s what to me the IB program is, and the connections that

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are made versus ‗I just took an IB course.‘‖ Noting how the AP program had expanded alongside the IB throughout its implementation, he talked about how the administration would like to see an eventual shift towards its original design—that is, ―Ideally it would eventually be nice to see a large share of students doing the full diploma.‖ Teachers also expressed interest for a similar outcome, only for different reasons. Discussing the original prospect of housing a diploma-only program, one teacher recalled how ―of all things, we loved the idea of really having that circle of kids that really works together as a program—that‘s so attractive, I mean truly, we were truly flying on a cloud…and I still embrace that idea.‖ I mean, we, for us, that opened up so many different possibilities. You know, taking that whole group and having our own schedule, and pulling kids out to go do things, or to go try and do a 3-day lab course. We just saw the flexibility of possibilities that we could give to that student population—endless, really… ―Much more of a cohort model, and more centrally located‖ she went on to describe how what this looked like ―in a real ideal world‖ was a school-within-school, and for teachers the opportunity to work with a cohort of advanced students held its own distinct appeal. Commenting on how ―we could still go the route of just being a diploma program‖ one teacher noted that ―some administrator had thrown out this idea of purchasing this site down the street, and making it a separate campus, and we were like, ‗Yes! do this; make it happen.‘ I‘d love that.‖ In looking into the school‘s action of adding the certificate option to the diploma program, I heard many positive comments from teachers and administrators, reflecting their satisfaction from the way they are now able to benefit a greater student population. At the same time, even as they celebrated the success of the certificate option at CHS, some teachers and administrators appeared to lament this detour from the original vision. Furthermore, key figures in both groups communicated a commitment to someday changing to a school that offers the IB diploma exclusively. These reservations served to

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complicate the idea that the IB will continue to expand in a way that would benefit the whole school. Serving the Master Schedule: Test Scores versus Class size Elevating the school‘s profile was a primary consideration in decisions relating to test scores, as preserving and promoting the school‘s competitive edge was clearly a district priority. Without the ability to promote outcomes, administrators could not market the school and generate the revenues it needed to stabilize and expand its operations. In order to make comparisons, and therefore remain competitive, teachers agreed that ―there has to be some standardization.‖ Using the IB program as one aspect of partial standardization, however, required certain accommodations to ensure the ‗school‘s brand.‘ In particular, the way students were distributed among the curricular tracks to ensure marketable IB outcomes raised several concerns in terms of fairness. As one IB teacher confided: ―You know, no one says it out loud, but scores are…I believe, scores matter.‖ It turned out that such a confession was hardly a secret, and many of the teachers I spoke with had something to say about the relationship of IB test scores and the number of students various faculty were assigned to teach. IB teachers appeared to be at odds with how differentiated class sizes affected non-IB teachers, and the conflict seemed to come from their complicity. Calling it ―part of the shame of IB,‖ one teacher argued that because ―the district has chosen to protect the IB program, [the general education teachers] all have really bigger classes than we do.‖ Even teachers who benefitted most from the current arrangement recognized the disconnect. On the one hand, they appreciated the recognition, attesting to the value of keeping their numbers low ―in part because discussion is so central to the process—that everyone speaks every day, everyone‘s voice is present, and that they know that that is a concrete expectation.‖ And providing such individual attention, devoting class time to indepth, ―would hard with 32 or 34.‖ At the same time, conflicted comments emerged, like

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―Yeah, I mean test scores are certainly important. Um, test scores are important, but it‘s not just the test scores, it‘s just that the students are taught well in [IB] classes. And then on the other hand, so a G student doesn‘t deserve to be taught well?‖ In offering a possible answer to that question from a strategic point of view, an IB teacher described a scenario at a neighboring school that experienced the adverse effects of open enrollment. A colleague who worked there at the time gave him an insider‘s account of losing students during economic hard-times. In detailing the fallout, providing the logic for using test scores strategically, he offered the following narrative: At [Central] when they were having financial difficulties 3 years ago, what happened? Class size went through the roof, so the guy who is teaching comparative politics, he had a 45 person class size, as opposed to mine that‘s 25, and he said ‗I didn‘t do as many assignments‘—you know, student grading—it‘s just time, you can‘t do it. And you go, ‗am I going to grade until 2 in the morning, and give myself a heart attack or a break-down in a year‘s time?‘ So certainly my point is, if you leveled all the classes, the school would stop to grow because you would not get as good results out of the top-level classes, less people would open enroll, you would have to fire some teachers, and the class size would slowly go up. Because leveling the course loads throughout the curricular tracks would ultimately take certain units away from concentrating on the externally assessed (IB) tests, using small classes to justify small classes is hardly irrational either. Given the conditions that open enrollment promotes, if you lose your luster, then you lose the game. Put another way: the smaller the class, the better the instruction, and better instruction equals higher scores. These circumstances seemed to hit close to home for IB teachers, as they consistently equated increased class size with increased grading. Furthermore, embedded in his analysis was something that most teachers feared, especially those who were accountable to student writing I asked one IB teacher whether having more students in a class affected the likelihood of providing high-quality teaching and learning. ―Of course,‖ she answered, declaratively. ―Yeah, that is a definite negative. I mean, by nature, you can only do so

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much, and if you are grading 180 papers, you are not going to assign as many extended project, full write-up labs. You know, essays and things to grade. You just can‘t.‖ Such was the case, too, when an all-IB teacher, who also happened to teach 4 instead of 5 classes, imagined if he carried the number of students expected of a regular, general education teacher. After considering the scenario at length, he conceded: ―Yeah, that would be a problem, we wouldn‘t be doing as many written assessments.‖ Additionally, because the externally assessed courses are responsible for recruiting, the general education classes not only get bigger, they might also get less attention when taught by an IB teacher. This possibility was evidenced by an IB teacher who teaches one section of general history. She noted that if she ―didn‘t teach the IB course, [she] would probably be having [her] general kids write more.‖ The time needed to deliver the results for her IB classes dominated her preparation and practice, and her acknowledgement pointed to a potential cost to the general education students. This sentiment was echoed by another IB teacher who explained how the oversight and accountability of his IB classes directed his attention. Using a policing metaphor, he said: When I am driving down the freeway, I might go 60 in a 55, and when the cops there, I am going 55. So it‘s a strange little human development thing, but I know that my work is going to be looked at by me and by other, so I know that there are other people that are going to look at my student work, so therefore, I am going raise the level of student work. I am going to do everything I can to make sure that my students are doing outstanding work. Knowing that it would be difficult to serve larger classes properly, IB teachers offer a series of rationalizations for permitting the status quo to continue. The veteran teachers acknowledged that ―small classes provides an experience, and there are things that happen in a small class that don‘t happen in a large class.‖ One teacher went so far as to suggest that IB classes provide a kind of special education for students ―who are there because they have been unsuccessful in regular classes.‖ And part of what makes them successful—for the first time, she added—―is the smaller, emphasis, really on engagement and having your voice in the room.‖

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A science teacher told me that IB class sizes had fluctuated considerably since its inception, ranging from the mid-30‘s to the upper 20‘s per section, depending on a variety of scheduling factors. ―And now the reality is that they are always in the 20s, and this year, I have dipped below that.‖ Explaining why she thought IB classes were steadily decreasing in size, if there was any official reason, or cap, she said: I think with IB there has been this wonderful recognition of that additional grading and workload, and I think…I couldn‘t do five classes at 35 with this AP and IB load; I mean I physically couldn‘t do it. I work, I mean I work late every night, and I work every day of every weekend—and I am not complaining—I mean I choose to do that, but I couldn‘t physically have enough hours to service, properly, classes that would have that size. Having made the case that small classes improve the quality of instruction, IB teachers who also taught general track courses teachers were not out to undo the gains made by IB for the students and the school. When asked if they thought the IB program might actually be hurting the school by concentrating resources this way, their comments underscored a common concern. Characterizing the problem with a solution, one general track teacher argued that if the administration: could just make sure they are not loading, because kids also drop out of IB—at a certain point, if it‘s not working, and then they go into G—so they are starting at G classes bigger anyway than these higher level classes. So, if they can do that—if they could make that somehow more balanced—I don‘t think it will continue be a problem: IB couldn‘t hurt the rest of the school. But if those other classes are just loaded up, then it hurts. Arriving at a balance, therefore, was the main thrust of the critique among those still teaching the general student population; or, ―the masses,‖ as one former IB teacher called them. According to those who understand how the master schedule is put together, however, the way the IB program was situated in relation to the rest of the school seemed to preclude such balance. I spoke with a senior guidance counselor who works on the master schedule, and she told me that ―IB goes in place first, and then the rest of the schedule is built around it.‖ In every other facet she had positive things to say about the program—that it was

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good for the school‘s reputation, good for the students it serves, and good for the teachers who teach those students—and still, she took exception with its primacy in dictating the rest of the school‘s operations. Commenting further she offered the following criticism: The only thing I would say is sometimes, you know, IB is the tail that wags the dog here. IB wags the whole school because IB determines the schedule for the whole school. The whole school is built around 40 kids. I do have some issue with that—that the schedule is built around IB first. I know that, so I do take a little issue with that, and also I think sometimes there have been some IB courses this semester that are running with 9 kids in them. When some of the upper-level maths are sitting at 34 kids, I have some issue with that. I don‘t think that‘s equitable. She went on to say that even though she is fond of the IB program, she feels an obligation ―to look at the whole spectrum of our students. So when the numbers don‘t balance out, and you would offer a class, and let a section go with 9 kids, I don‘t understand that.‖ With general classes sitting at 30 students on average, there was a lack of ―justification‖ for IB‘s uneven position. Ultimately, she was resigned to the fact that the IB ―has to fit, and I get it, but this is a big building—to have 40 or 50 students—and the other 2,800 wait for things to fit with that‖ was a source of consternation. Some of the IB-trained teachers who still taught courses in the general track took issue with this trend in class size as well. Conceding that ―it kind of depended on the hour, or the way the kids fell into it,‖ an IB math teacher commented on his non-IB course loads: ―I had an algebra class at the end of the day that was 34, and I only had seats for 32. My higher algebra classes were a little bit more manageable, but they still floated in the high 20s, low 30s.‖ To challenge this arrangement, he explained how he had to ―become more of an advocate for myself and for other teachers that have those larger numbers, especially in the general or some of our remedial classes.‖ In trying to encourage better parity, he has tried to encourage his department chair to staff lower-level classes accordingly, ―and that‘s worked fairly well over the last couple of years.‖ A teacher newly trained in IB, who has taught remedial history for the past nine years, explained what happened to class sizes after the IB program was introduced:

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―They got bigger at first, and then we had to fight very, very, very, very hard, and they have been capped, but the cap is high—the cap is 35, I think—which is still ridiculous.‖ She went on to say that improving the regular track would likely resolve the grading conundrum she presently battles. Similarly, having advocated on behalf of her general education students, a former IB teacher felt inspired to report that ―it‘s kind of great, because next year, and I can‘t say this in front of my IB buddies, because I love them, but I‘m so happy the school‘s going to make their sections bigger. So that our sections aren‘t so big.‖ I asked her how she was able to make this happen and she told me that: Enough G teachers said, ‗Oh for God sakes. Why are there 17 or 12 smart and motivated kids in your class, when there are 33 in G?‘ That‘s just stupid. Because you can teach, pretty effectively, a group of 33 really motivated kids, right? Much more easily than you can with kids who, you know, are hard to move. Addressing their concerns, however, these teachers seemed to know that it will require more than a few champions. Even among their ―IB buddies‖ there appeared to be a certain apathy in changing the status quo. As a result, while some have accepted the fact that IB scores mean more to the school overall, others feel that doing the work in IB is serving its own, unique purpose as well. And because serving IB students required a lot from IB teachers, they had their own commitments to honor; as such, a more equitable change in class sizes did not appear to serve their personal or professional interests. Public versus Private Goods If you build it, who will come? Throughout the interviews, it was widely acknowledged that the reputation of the IB program is meant to attract students from private schools, as well as students from neighboring districts. In a review of the district‘s strategic planning documents, each year there are specific targets to be met for recruitment. Exceeding these targets, the superintendent detailed how ―the revenue generated by the private school students who have returned is over $2.4 million this year and over $9 million for the past four years.‖

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The fact that private schools were losing students (see Table 4) was not viewed negatively by most of the administration and teachers interviewed; rather, such competition seemed justifiable, and even wise. As one teacher remarked: ―Here, I think it‘s more here about siphoning the kids from the private schools, people who have already made up their mind and have a perception about what they think a high-quality education is, and then convincing them they can get it for free.‖

Table 4: Private School Enrollment Decreasing: 2005-2009 Year

Total

2009

1067

2008

1238

2007

1367

2006

1482

2005

1584

The principal at CHS echoed this sentiment, as he talked about reports he had been receiving since raising the school‘s profile. He insisted that adding the IB made private-school parents think twice about where they were sending their kids. ―In fact, most of them argue that, ‗O my goodness, why we‘re paying $15,000 a year to go to a private school when we could come here and have more options?‘‖ An IB teacher who had open-enrolled his son at CHS concurred, explaining how ―we offer so much.‖ Providing a straight-forward assessment, he added: ―Let‘s be honest, I teach a course that examines the political structure of Iran as one of the units, it‘s a specialized kind of thing, you can‘t have that in a small, little Catholic school; they don‘t have the capacity. We offer 30+ AP/IB courses total, so you have that advantage.‖

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However, when discussing the students who were coming from nearby public schools, a sense of ambivalence crept into the conversations, and comments like ―it seems to contradict the spirit or nature of fair and equal education that public schools are supposed to be‖ began to emerge. Here the values of public education appeared to be at odds with the policy context of the district (and state), which led one teacher to call the practice ―thieving.‖ ―IB,‖ she argued, ―is something that the district uses to brand itself, and we ‗steal‘ students from other districts.‖ Even as the ―aggressive‖ nature of marketing the school‘s reputation was viewed negatively by some teachers, they seemed willing and able to compartmentalize these feelings in favor of the pragmatic results of the practice. For example, having estimated that ―at least 400 students in this building right now are open-enrolled kids,‖ one teacher rationalized the situation by pointing to the benefits the school derives when it competes for students. I think that more kids are going to get exposed to these opportunities. I like that idea. You know, from a nuts and bolts perspective, we really do need kids to come in here in order for the program to continue to grow and thrive. Like the views of many faculty, too, there was a distinct sense that if such practices were a necessary condition for sustaining the IB program, then they would simply look the other way and concentrate more on the rewards that came with solvency. As one aspiring IB-teacher explained: ―I like that kids have a choice in where they go to school, but I don‘t like the ways that schools are marketing to get students to come there.‖ In this way, when discussing the implications of using Open Enrollment to attract students, most teachers seemed willing to set aside their ideals (that supported equity for all) in favor of the real returns brought about by the district‘s symbolic use of the IB program. Some even found the situation laughable, identifying the IB coordinator as a buffer between business and the books. One teacher characterized the situation, suggesting that ―while the school district is selling it as an alternative to AP, I feel like

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she was selling it for what it is—for what IB really is.‖ Ultimately, I got the sense that most teachers accepted the arrangement, as one veteran teacher put it, like a ―love-hate thing.‖ I really like the classes, and I like the…It‘s just the whole [CHS], kind of marketing, and selling and bragging thing. And that really doesn‘t have anything to do with IB. And I can kind of separate that—you know, our PR person, and the whole, that doesn‘t…I mean it isn‘t just a scam; I mean it‘s real. So that‘s ok. IB is a good thing.‖ Another teacher put it more bluntly, providing a fairly sober evaluation of the district‘s marketing plan. Having said that ―without open enrollment, this school would be screwed‖ he went on to characterize the process accordingly: And, you know, for better or worse, I could be cynical about it, and I can criticize it; on the other hand, somehow all these cuts have happened, and yet this school seems to be stronger than ever. And how did that happen? It happened through really careful management, and bringing in those kids through open enrollment. Pointing out that they were operating in conditions governed by the dictates of a business model, another IB teacher forcefully argued how there was ―absolutely nothing wrong in my mind in competing, schools competing, and that‘s why I think CHS in the last ten years has become a lot better school because it‘s keeping up and becoming a more competitive school, so to get in other students.‖ Using the bottom line to drive the point home, he offered the following analogy: ―You know Google is like the greatest work environment, and people want to work there, and they hire people away from Yahoo. Do we feel sorry for Yahoo? Do we feel sorry for whomever it was that was beat?‖ In other words, if a school was to operate as a business, the outcomes for the losers should are not to be lamented. If you build it, how will they get there? Using the IB program to attract students to attend CHS, school officials revealed how this strategy had worked favorably thus far. In making open enrollment work for the district, it turned out that its proximity to the nearest major metropolis, alongside some

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technical provisions in the state‘s open enrollment laws, aided its advantage not only in the number of students, but also the kind of students crossing into its boundaries. The fact that CHS is in a district where transportation for transferring students is ―still parentprovided‖ appeared to limit poor kids from taking advantage of the educational opportunities advertised there. In the state I conducted this study, the principal noted that, ―given a few parameters, you usually are accepted‖ at the school you wish to attend. And as long as there is room at the host school, and the transferring student has not ―been involved in any major crimes,‖ they are free to leave their district in favor of another. Among administrators and teachers, the lack of official restrictions were viewed positively, as keeping the school and its programs ‗open‘ was often equated with a sense of fairness. Even so, both administrators and teachers at CHS were aware of the potential problems associated with accepting large numbers of low-SES students looking to leave the city to take advantage of their open enrollment options. Several teachers even pointed to the ―dangerous‖ situations developing in neighboring districts where ―a certain type of student will arrive that might bring down the reputation of the school.‖ Wanting to remain unrestricted in terms of access, though clearly aware of the adverse implications, district and school administrators described how exceptions in the states Open Enrollment policy essentially shielded them from this situation. The superintendent explained how CHS did not have to confront the potential influx of inner-city students, noting how the numbers ―manage themselves‖ due to the districts unique location. At the outer edge of the metropolis, several layers of suburbs provided their community with a buffer. And, unlike CHS, because ―all the other districts around us are on a desegregation program that works with [the city],‖ they are required to ―provide transportation to their doors.‖ In this way, as the principal pointed out, the fact that ―our first ring suburbs will pick up the inner city kids that want to move‖ was seen as a built-in shock-absorber, filtering out ―some of that diversity.‖ At the same time, ―if

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open enrollment were really going to work well,‖ one teacher noted, ‗ideally‘ it would have ―to facilitate getting kids from wherever they live to wherever they want to go, so that they can have the best education that they can get.‖ The cost of providing for such mobility, however, was duly noted as the primary reason for the ―lack of diversity‖ among the open enrollment population. In that sense, as the principal explained, ―parents that don‘t have a lot of means can‘t get [their kids] out here.‖ And according to the superintendent ―that alone is kind of a throttle on the whole thing.‖ Summary In the first section of chapter IV, the foundations for the claim that the IB benefits the whole school by attracting open enrollment students were detailed. The district‘s strategy was based on the notion that offering unique curricula and assessments made the school more marketable, and evidence for the plan‘s success was reportedly measured by revenues generated. The additional funds would not only stabilize operations at CHS, they would ultimately go towards system-wide improvements; and new classrooms, new programs, and new academic norms were among the indicators highlighted. Because improved enrollment at CHS was believed to benefit the entire school community, attracting students was considered instrumental in establishing this cost-effective, valueadded cycle. Subsequently, I pointed to some potentially adverse effects embedded in the district‘s efforts to utilize the IB this way. For example, even as it was praised for expanding the IB program‘s reach, the early addition of the certificate option was roundly considered a disappointment, leaving the future of the more accessible version of the program in doubt. Maintaining marketable test scores was the next area that received attention, as this district priority appeared to draw system resources more favorably towards IB students and teachers; and decisions relating to class sizes, grading practices and scheduling efforts were explored. In the second half of section I, the recruiting

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practices of the strategic plan were also reviewed, and ethical complications noted. In particular, the relationship between the district‘s marketing efforts and its impact on nearby private and public schools was called into question, as well as the policy context that seemed to naturally limit low-SES inner-city students from open enrolling at CHS. Section II ―The other big area, of course, is teachers who prepare themselves to be IB teachers also teach other courses, and so they don‘t throw those skills aside when they walk into those classrooms. There‘s a lot of great staff development that wears on all of the courses they teach.‖ --Superintendant of Schools Introduction As part of its oversight and quality assurance, the IB requires teachers to participate in its exclusive professional development conferences in order to teach IB courses. This provision not only gives the IBO a way to ensure that teachers understand the ‗best practices‘ associated with the IB brand, it also serves as the foundation for schools to claim organizational improvements and whole school benefits. Schools that adopt the IB program regularly point out how faculty who participate in the IB‘s mandatory professional development have an impact on the entire system, and CHS was no exception. In much the same way that the IB program‘s reputation for quality curricula and standardized assessments allowed CHS to bank on increased enrollments, the IB also provided the school with another capacity building measure through teacher training. Accordingly, district documents explained how the IB was expected to raise the quality of the entire school because ―teachers trained in IB impact all of their classes with improved teaching methods and pedagogy‖ (CHS, 2005, p. 8). Furthermore, the value of this professional development would also benefit students who are not enrolled in the IB, ―as teachers trained in IB share new pedagogy with colleagues‖ (CHS, 2005, p. 6).

This section, therefore, details the findings that related to how and why the IB was expected to benefit all the students at CHS through teacher training. In doing so, I

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will document and explore three major assumptions that were offered to undergird the claim for a whole school effect, and the three major narratives that follow will mirror these assumptions. The first reports on the expectations for having IB-trained teachers split their schedules in order to provide non-IB students with an elevated educational experience. I then go on to describe the problems associated with this schedule design. The second outlines the notion that IB-trained teachers will share their newly acquired skills with their departments in professional learning communities (PLCs), enhancing the distribution of the IB training. The problems associated with PLCs are then reported. The third and final narrative in this section considers how program growth will add to the claim of an improved teaching capacity in terms of professional development opportunities, which is followed by some of the limitations found. Explicit Policy or Implicit Philosophy: The Split Assignment Asking district and school administrators about whether they see the benefit of having IB-trained teachers assigned to non-IB courses, each suggested that such an arrangement was positive for the whole school. Their comments coalesced around the principle that the professional development required by the IBO not only strengthened the faculty, but the knowledge and skills acquired through this teacher-training would inevitably penetrate the other (Non-IB) courses in the teacher‘s schedule. The main idea that resonated here was the assumption that IB-trained teachers do indeed teach across the curricular tracks, and when they do, they are not going to keep their enhanced skills hidden from the students in these courses. Calling it a ‗fact‘ that ―if your teacher is IB trained, they are going to employ some of those IB instructional strategies and assessment ways in their non-IB courses,‖ the principal at CHS insisted the IB went beyond the participants in the program. In an attempt to clearly emphasize this point, the superintendent insisted that ―the other big

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area, of course, is teachers who prepare themselves to be IB teachers, also teach other courses, and so they don‘t throw those skills aside when they walk into those classrooms. There‘s a lot of great staff development that wears on all of the courses they teach.‖ The principal also agreed with the superintendent that ―one of the most fantastic things about IB is the teacher training,‖ which he thought provided his faculty with new ideas that are ―so internationally sound.‖ And whether the newly trained teacher comes back to ―teach all IB, or you just do your circuit for a couple of years,‖ the research-based strategies they are exposed to will make their way into classrooms throughout the school. When discussing how they knew these skills followed an instructor across the curricular tracks, the administrators did not soften in their certainty. For example, even as he admitted that it would be ‗hard for anybody to assess, but the person,‖ the superintendent explained how he viewed the scenario by suggesting that it is more about the skills becoming a natural part of the developing teacher. In this way, without appropriating who they are for in advance ―the strategies for instruction and how they help students develop intellectually are just—you never sort out where you got that from—you just know that you are using it.‖ Similarly, the principal remained ―absolutely‖ convinced that once ―you‘ve learned the craft, you‘ve learned some strategies, some engagement strategies, and that doesn‘t leave you. So you bring it to others that we‘re maybe not reaching in that IB or AP class, and now they‘re in better with what you do.‖ There was general agreement among the administration and faculty that distributing the talent of IB teachers by having them split their teaching duties across the curricular tracks was both strategically and ethically sound. Expanding on this sentiment, one assistant principal explained how ―we shouldn‘t have only ‗our best teachers‘ teaching AP and IB, and then you are putting the ones (well, who knows…) in some of the struggling courses.‖ Doing so would show a disregard for the students who would not participate in advanced classes, as ―kids in those courses need those high quality teachers,

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and we have tried to follow some of the research. We have looked at Doug Reeves and others who talk about making sure you are putting your best teachers in all courses.‖ Having been a member of the faculty before entering the administration, he supported the general idea of this arrangement by referring back to that period, noting how when he taught it was a given that ―you would have an AP-level course and a lower-level course, and I know we try to keep that practice up so that somebody just doesn‘t solely teach a certain course.‖ The idea that teaching assignments were shared across the curricular tracks was generally considered the status quo, too. Yet, asked whether there was a formal policy in place to ensure split teaching assignments among the faculty, an assistant principal answered, ―No. I do believe that we are in a spot where we explicitly say, you know, we are going to want people teaching all courses.‖ And even though there was agreement that doing so would produce positive results for the whole school, the transfer of these newly acquired skills across curricular tracks was trusted to take place, naturally by necessity. More specifically, as there were typically no more than two or three sections of any given IB course at the time of this study, there was a good chance that the rest of an IB teacher‘s 5-section assignment included something other than IB. As an administrator who helps coordinate the faculty assignments each year explained: You know I think it happens by default to be honest. Most of our teachers teach two classes, and most of our IB teachers will teach the IB class that is theirs—that they‘ve become accustomed to teaching—and then a different general curriculum class, usually just a mainstream US History, or something like that. Submitting that this notion was ―one of the sales pieces of [IB]—maybe sales isn‘t the right word, but a promotional piece—that it does raise everybody‖ he was sure that it happened, even as his confidence was based essentially on anecdote. ―Any time that teachers are learning, and when they are involved in quality professional development pieces where they are having to implement it, I think you are going to get a positive result. So, I hear teachers coming back just excited.‖ Without a policy to assure that IB-

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trained teachers would be placed across the curricular hierarchy, much of the support for this claim was therefore incidental, as told by the teachers themselves. In this way, the IB coordinator, who helps implement the program, also said that she hears from her IB teachers about various improvements they provide to their non-IB classes. During these ―spontaneous conversations,‖ for example, she recalled recently how an English teacher even said ―Oh, I am teaching my 10th grade English classes in many ways like I taught my 11th grade IB English class because I felt like that was the right thing to do, so that all students can feel successful and come to become more confident in their own reading.‖ Similarly, characterizing the benefits of a split schedule, the social studies department chair reported that ―one of the most common things that you hear is that it has influenced my teaching other ways.‖ He, too, listened to his faculty comment that simply becoming familiar with the standards and rubrics the IB uses were beneficial to their understanding of the craft. And in the end, he pointed out how ―even if they‘ve done just the training, and they haven‘t even taught the class, it changes the way they think about history.‖ Nearly all the IB-trained teachers interviewed concurred with this sentiment as well. As they discussed the virtues of their IB professional development experiences, those who taught non-IB courses provided specific examples of how that training impacted the teaching and learning process in both courses. An English teacher noted how she could not help sharing her newly developed skills after ―seeing all these different kinds of kids find success with it, or enjoyment out of it. And it was a great inspiration for figuring out ways to bring it into my [general] tenth grade class at the time.‖ Similarly, one IB math teacher added, ―I feel like I have developed a better rapport with [general education] kids, and it‘s hard to put a finger on it, but since I went through the IB training, I do feel like kids are less confused on my tests; kids are less confused by my instructions because I am more deliberate in what I am asking for.‖ And a science teacher said, ―what it has done, to be honest, is it‘s compelled me and in a way it‘s forced my

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hand to have to do that not only with IB, but it‘s made me better in any other course that I teach, as far as the kind of lab experience I try to provide for the kids.‖ The Problems - Sharing Worth versus Protecting Turf Throughout the interviews, IB teachers provided examples of how they used IBstyle teaching techniques in non-IB classes, which helped support the claim that the whole school benefits when this occurs. The fact they were teaching non-IB classes, however, was due in part to the relatively small number of sections of IB courses in each department. As stated earlier, since a regular teaching schedule at CHS was five sections per faculty, and the maximum number of sections for any IB class at the time of this study was three, it followed that an IB teacher would necessarily teach at least two nonIB courses. In only one instance did an IB teacher exclusively teaching IB courses, which was the result of teaching half time after 30 years of service. And though most IB teachers reported splitting their teaching duties accordingly, the nature of their non-IB schedules appeared to limit their interaction with general education students. Partly the result of supply and demand, securing an advanced teaching assignment was difficult to attain, and the competition was not always collegial. According to a veteran IB teacher, part of the problem was how the appearance of inequity was substantiated and sustained by trends in teacher placement and promotion. Attempting to explain the disparity, she assumed some personal responsibility as she reflected on her role in reinforcing it: But, you know, maybe those of us who teach IB, if we talked about it in a different way. And part of it, in English at least—[my colleague] teaches 11th grade IB, and [she] teaches 12 X now, so kind of smart 12th graders and then the IB juniors, and I teach just IB. Maybe if we taught some of the general classes, too, and using IB, but we are not doing that, so I think people just see us as being elitist. In other words, since IB teachers do not often teach general education classes, they cannot impact that student population. Moreover, the fact that IB teachers mostly provide

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instruction to higher-performing students in the advanced tracks at CHS has earned these members of the faculty a reputation for preferring privilege. One notable consequence of this perception of prestige, too, was the tension it fostered between teachers in the various curricular tracks. In several departments, teachers noted that once you get an advanced teaching assignment that a certain professional trajectory begins to take shape. In particular, it turned out that some of the teachers who have had training, and have yet to get an IB assignment, covet these positions. A department chair caricatured the degree of desirability these courses hold on aspiring faculty. He both laughed and sighed as he noted a comment a teacher made in pressing him for next year‘s assignment. She told him that ‗I don‘t want to have kids, I just want to teach [IB]. Though admittedly hyperbolic, the essence of his remarks pointed to an area of inquiry that deserved attention. Quite seriously, too, possible explanations for the potential boundaries of this claim began to emerge, especially as IB teachers discussed how teacher status affected the decisions they made in order to secure an advanced schedule. One IB-trained teacher who had yet received an advanced teaching assignment explained how ―oftentimes, weaker teachers or newer teachers get put in 9th and 10th grade, and the expectation is that that‘s a reasonable assignment for them, like they are new so they should teach 9th grade, like 9th grade doesn‘t require a lot of anything.‖ Finding fault with this perception, calling it ―frustrating,‖ she argued: ―that it takes talent to reach remedial students, and I really feel that I have a talent for working with them, but I have lots of other things to offer too, and I sort of think the impression is that, I do this class, therefore that‘s all the talent I have.‖ Clearly indignant about the lack of validation in her present teaching assignment, she pointed to a reward system that provided incentives for pursuing excellence at the expense of the general education population. Having described those who are assigned

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low-level courses as faculty who are either weak or new, she contrasted such a designation with those who had an advanced schedule. This purely my observation, and probably more honest than I should be, but my perspective on it is that the upper-levels—I mean I should say that differently—the higher grades are seen as more prestigious than the lower grades...but that‘s also true for the level that you are teaching: that‘s super prestigious. So if you have IB seniors, that‘s like, I mean the top. Not incidentally, as she defended her perception of teacher status and its impact on the lower-level student population, she added, ―and I say that because I teach remedial kids and no one wants that job.‖ Finding herself at the bottom, too, she went on to describe what appeared to be a pattern of self-promotion in relation to the professional trajectory at CHS. Providing an in-depth calculus of the variables that took her from critic to convert, she characterized how her antagonistic attitude about how her initial feelings about the IB program changed over time. Thus when the IB first came to CHS, she remembered thinking: ―Oh, jeez, what is being done to help the other side of the school because it really seemed unfair.‖ That the best the teachers and all of this cash, and everything, is going towards this very small portion of the population. So I am kind of in conflict about it because I want kids to be pulled towards it. Making sure that students were signing up for IB was not her only concern either. As she intended to go in that direction well, she acknowledged what it might mean for the Remedial courses that she worked so hard to serve and protect, if she found herself in IB. Such potential was on her mind too ―because we just finished our round of choosing schedules for next year, submitting our choices and what we would want to do.‖ She went on to explain that she wrote the department chair how she ―would happily do what I do now, which is teach in this remedial program, and I also teach accelerated 9th graders, or I would be willing to do AP US history, or IB, whichever is open in IB.‖ In doing so,

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however, she noted that if the chair saw fit to give her a new, advanced preparation, then she would need to give up one of her present assignments. Not wanting to get ―stuck with 3 preps, which would defeat the purpose‖ she provided a glimpse into the decision-making process. In summarizing her thinking, and weighing her prospects, it became apparent that this was not simply a practical decision, either. I knew that if I were going to get one of these other 2 options, either AP or IB, that I would have to give up one or the other, and I decided to give up the alternative learning kids, which is kind of crushing for me actually because I don‘t know—it‘s not that I think I am the only one who can teach them—but I don‘t know who else would. But I felt kind of gross, actually, about leaving them, but I also thought that I wanted to try some other harder things, and I did this for a long time, and I was ready to go do something else. Having been trained to teach higher-level courses, and aware of the professional differences they could make in her daily life at CHS, the choice was self-evident. She had thought at length about the teachers in her department that teach IB, noting how ―they are doing it‖ and that ―they are fine.‖ And even though she could tell that ―every now and then they are overwhelmed by the amount of writing that they have to read‖ she was also conscious that ―an IB or an AP assignment would be sort of validating.‖ From this exchange it was clear that she was not going to sacrifice herself anymore for a position that is both difficult and thankless; instead, what takes place is a fairly stout rationalization of the value-laden context that provided her with a professional path. At the end of her reflection, she remarked how it was all for naught because she got ―a totally different schedule.‖ In noting the irony of the situation, however, she added that her pursuit was not over: ―I just think IB is a program that is really well-suited for kids, and I really would like to try that kind of learning, and that kind of instruction because I think it would be different, and it would challenge me in a different way.‖ ‗Ready‘ to take on this new ‗validating‘ assignment, teaching advanced students in smaller classes with students who were there to learn, this teacher made it clear how her

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personal interests deserved consideration as well. Ultimately, leaving behind the lowerlevel kids was not easy, ―but the cool thing about teaching accelerated 9th graders, which I will have exclusively next year, is that I can find kids and steer them towards [IB] early enough so that they still have years to make the decision. I can try and kind of encourage them to seek IB out later.‖ The silver lining then was how this new position better aligned with where she, too, would someday like to be. Once newly initiated IB teachers obtained an IB schedule, the positioning that goes on in order to maintain their teaching assignments was also evidenced. Explaining why he traded lower-level classes for more sections of IB, a math teacher discussed how he ―gave up one section of [general] Algebra‖ so that he ―could keep both [Standard Level] SL and [Higher Level] HL‖ as more sections were added. Attempting to maintain a foothold in both IB offerings, remembering how he was ―one of the few people that‘s actually been able to break into the group that teaches advanced courses,‖ he explained how ―it‘s almost that territorial for me.‖ His predicament was not uncommon, either. In the history department, an IB teacher related a similar sentiment. Due to fluctuating enrollment in the Higher Level IB History, she noted how even though she has 3 smaller sections this year, she did not know ―for next year if I‘ll have two classes again that are big, or if it will be three that are, you know, nice sized.‖ And the lack of certainty appeared to undercut the desire to share the assignment. She emphasized this point when she admitted that she would ―like someone else to come in and teach that senior year with me. But that can‘t happen, I don‘t want that to happen if there‘s only two sections of a class.‖ Rather than share and distribute the balance of new sections of IB, as the program grew so too did the anxiety that prompted teachers to defend their personal and professional ascension. Furthermore, as these teachers sought to prevent the administration from taking an advanced preparation away, possibly sending them back to general education classes, efforts to further establish themselves were increasingly aimed at protecting their status.

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Status Attainment: Trending Towards the Top Among the more suggestive points of convergence in the interviews was how individual IB teachers viewed their own privileged status. In most departments, I spoke with teachers whose entire assignment was dedicated to advanced courses, though each of them thought their high-status schedules were unique, and based on specific department needs. Many of these teachers stated how they believe splitting assignments would be good for the whole school, acknowledging that such an arrangement was theoretically sound. Expressing this sentiment, an IB English teacher told me: ―I think the general idea of that would benefit everybody. I think if I were an administrator I would see it as a good idea for people to have a mix of general classes and the IB/AP type classes.‖ And still, even as they were in favor of the idea in theory, those with choice schedules were not looking to ‗demote‘ themselves to substantiate their beliefs. In this way, another veteran teacher affirmed the principle, even calling the strategy ―healthy‖ for the system. Having asserted the value of ‗having your head in the clouds, and your feet on the ground,‘ however, she qualified her concerns: Yeah, I know that‘s really good, but would I necessarily want to do it any time soon? For personal reasons, because, you know in some ways, I could teach 5 G classes, and I would have the time of my life. I mean I love teaching, so that‘s a great experience for me. But selfishly, I like having to go to the next level…with kids. Another senior faculty in the social studies department provided a similar assessment of spreading out teacher assignments. When I asked her if she thought it was something worth pursuing, she was more tepid in her response, saying ―Hmm. Yes, I guess so… there is some of that, but I just really can‘t speak to it very well. See I…I am unusual because I teach so much of IB and I only teach this other AP class that I had taught before I taught IB as well.‖ In rationalizing her lukewarm approval, she added: ―I do feel sometimes like I do have a particular strength in these upper-level classes that while I would be a good teacher in a G class or an R class that I am not sure that at this point in my career…‖ Cutting herself short—perhaps recognizing the difficulty in

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completing her thought—she simply said, ―I guess I am not talking like a good [Midwesterner] here.‖ In this seemingly stark moment of awareness and self-deprecation, this teacher not only shared why she unable to generalize about the effect on non-IB classes, but pointed to the conditions that justified her unique position. Though remarkably candid, it was striking to learn here how considering herself unusual, essentially providing for a ‗niche‘ at CHS, was not at all uncommon among teachers holding these top-heavy positions. Several IB teachers saw the situation similarly, and imagined that split scheduling was the norm. One 30-year veteran, who was exclusively teaching advanced courses at the time of this study, offered the following reflection on the subject, suggesting that for the majority of the faculty such a scenario: I think…usually it is. I am probably unique. I mean I think about my other IB colleagues around the building, and there is quite a blend of teachers that teach G level and IB and G level and AP. In unique circumstances I think some teachers are doing all the advanced whatever in their department, but I think that‘s the rare bird. This assessment became a familiar refrain among the veteran teachers; indeed, as the program grew, and more sections were added, their stock in those classes also increased. One of the IB English teachers explained how she used to teach one or two AP-level alongside three or four general-level classes, depending on the number of AP sections available. However, this distribution changed, she noted, ―once the IB program came, and then I taught a mix of AP Lit and IB, and this is the first year that I am teaching only IB.‖ At the outset, though technically still splitting her teaching duties between two types of classes, the impact on her non-IB students moved from general education students to the advanced course-taking population. With this shift in status, especially when they considered themselves the exception, their explanations also shifted from how they obtained their IB schedule to the factors that kept their colleagues from taking the chance and trying their hand at teaching

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upper-level courses. Thus the conversations turned, and it became apparent that some of the ‗best‘ teachers also felt that their placement was necessitated by the availability of willing and able candidates. In this way, as her schedule was wholly devoted to AP/IB, a science teacher reiterated how her ―situation is kind of unique because not a lot of people are jumping to teach 2 years of biology in one year.‖ When I asked why she thought fewer teachers were involved in teaching advanced courses, she appeared to be at a loss, dismayed at the fact that while there have been openings ―not everyone was putting their name on the list for the opportunity to teach those courses.‖ She went on to say that ―in fact, I have solicited—we had an opening for the year 2 position—I talked to some of our Biology staff about the possibility, seeing if it would be a good fit, and I was told, ‗it‘s too much work.‘‖ Acknowledging that some of the regular faculty fear the amount of work such an assignment seemed to demand, another IB teacher explained the variables play: I think that‘s part of it, that there is a little bit of intimidation about the workload, and then there‘s a sort of deferring to other staff that maybe have been around a little longer, you know seniority, that kind of thing. But I do think that there is on the part of some people, there is a hesitation to teach the courses. Whatever the reason for their ‗hesitation,‘ the lack of candidates for the new IB sections, has consequences for the school‘s ability to deliver on the claim that the whole school benefits from the IB teachers having non-IB schedules. As the program grows and these positions go unfilled, teachers who have proven they can handle the material are increasingly called upon to ensure the program‘s integrity. In satisfying the needs of the school by taking the extra responsibility, however, these teachers find themselves further alone at the top. And even if it is a good place to be, over time this trend further isolates their talents from the general population. High-status teachers also explained how teaching advanced-level students was not necessarily within the purview of the general education faculty. Commenting on how ―there have been years when we have had a hard time getting people to do the advanced

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courses,‖ one teacher shared that being able to teach and ―grade writing‖ at the IB level was not entirely common. And though she did not think it was a problem in her department, another all-IB teacher explained how teaching IB classes ―had unusual professional requirements,‖ and that the administration needed ―to be careful in their hiring, and hire people who can do this.‖ Noting that ―not all teachers are really comfortable with that,‖ it became apparent that teachers with advanced schedules felt their particular skill sets were not necessarily the kind most teachers possessed. In other words, ―to be brutally honest,‖ one teacher explained, ―there are star teachers in every institution, right? Where are all the star teachers in this school? They are teaching AP and IB classes.‖ Perhaps as a way to enhance their own special position then, certain abilities became prerequisites for gaining entry into the program‘s teacher core. One teacher summarized it this way: First of all, if you are going to teach an IB course, you are going to have to work harder than if you teach general classes. The second thing, let‘s put it bluntly, there‘s a limited number of people who could teach IB Econ, just because of the content. I think there is a limited number of people that can teach IB physics as well. On one level, an IB teacher must be willing to work harder, which appears to be fair request given the stakes that external assessed examinations necessitate. But willingness alone was not sufficient; rather, the IB teacher needs to be capable of carrying the load. Projecting the heavy burden they dutifully take on, some of the teachers who have these courses feel that their status has been earned too. In their estimation, the benefits of the position are a natural extension of a merit-based hierarchy. For example, imagining a lighter teaching assignment than she presently carries, one IB teacher suggested that, ―if I taught 5 G classes my work hours per week would be 15 to 20 hours less. I am not exaggerating, so that‘s kind of attractive; I mean it‘s kind of attractive because it would nice to not have that extra workload.‖ And although many considered teaching IB a lot of work, several detailed how they also found it very rewarding. According to one highly

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accomplished member of the science department, the journey thus far has been worth the weight; that is, both personally and professionally it has been ―the delight of my life to be teaching these courses; I mean I couldn‘t be happier.‖ It challenges me. I have to work at my pedagogy, and at my curriculum and content expertise. I have had to do more professional development, and to put more effort into my role as a Biologist, than I have ever been asked to do in any of my teaching. And for me that is exciting and stimulating, and I wouldn‘t…I mean I love it. Having the drive, too, was essential to her exceptional status, and the personal fulfillment was in effect a part of the pressure to perform. As one veteran IB faculty explained: ―Yeah, it‘s been hard; I‘ve had to study hard; I‘ve had to try to figure things out. And, yeah, it‘s been a good thing for me—to wake me up again. And part of it for me was to be awakened intellectually again. And I felt that.‖ A colleague in her department, who came to IB after 20 years of practice, recalled her experience when she began to teach those courses, saying quite profoundly: ―I think I learned how to teach, finally in a way that made sense when I started doing the IB program.‖ Having arrived at such an assignment, feeling ‗fortunate‘ in finding a good match, another IB teacher said simply, ―the IB is like ‗welcome home.‘‖ Providing a cautionary tale, one former IB teacher sounded an alarm in relation to finding a home in IB. Having been overseas for 3 years, she was given a regular teaching assignment when she returned to CHS. As she detailed her former schedule, she commented on what it was like teaching mostly advanced courses with her peers. With 2 sections of IB and 3 accelerated 11th grade sections—her rolls totaling 120 students—she explained how that was ―sweet compared to a regular gig where you had 150.‖ Noting that she was currently assigned to teach 5 sections of general 10th grade English, she went on to forcefully critique the situation: I was spoiled. And I see now that G classes are big; they are 30, 32, and I see that the IB‘s are still small. And it‘s wrong. And I am like really pissed off about it because it is discriminatory. I know those [IB] kids are easier to teach; I know it. I know [IB teachers]

117 are going to have a lot of work to do with assessments, but I also know they are easier. And they know what they are doing, and there is this thickness…and I know there are smart kids in G, but there is this kind of critical mass that makes it hard to move. Such a bifurcation in student tracks helped further feed the flight of high-status teacher‘s towards higher-level courses in her estimation. Additionally, having been on both sides of what she characterized as a widening divide, she asserted that there was a real ―danger‖ for non-IB students when teachers ―only have motivated kids who are thinking before they even walk in‖ the classroom. She claimed that an all-advanced schedule conditions the teacher to adopt unreal expectations, adding that she did not think it was good ―to think that that is what teaching is.‖ Another IB teacher acknowledged the difficulty faced by general and remedial teachers at the school, noting how ―they are fighting an uphill battle.‖ Following up on her recognition of the situation, my question turned to whether IB was making the hill steeper to climb? And that‘s the thing, you know, about the whole argument about G and R classes, too. Well, is there really damage done, or do these classes have different problems that just aren‘t being addressed? And maybe they would be addressed, if IB weren‘t here, but maybe they still wouldn‘t be addressed. Probably they still wouldn‘t be addressed. The suggestion that little could be done because ―many of the problems are not school problems‖ appeared to permit some apathy too. That the IB was not doing any harm seemed to provide these teachers some protection from charges that they might be making things worse. As one teacher put it: So, you know, it‘s OK because in a way my small classes in a school this size, even if they…if I had 2 sections of 35, that would have reduced the other 12th G sections by 1. So they would be sitting in a class with 32, rather than 33. So, there isn‘t really a logical argument for making my classes as huge as theirs…you know, I am not going save them. Thus the general futility of addressing the presence of persistent inequities allowed IB teachers to continue enjoying their days, as they described them, ―working with that group of kids that is really ready to fly, and willing to fly.‖ In this way, the

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additional responsibilities, like ―you know, because of the number of recommendations, because of the extra grading, and all that‖ became the focus for projecting the value of their efforts. Even the extra workload was rhetorical in relation to teaching general education courses. As one teacher granted: ―there‘s no question [IB] is an easier assignment. I am not really tired at the end of the day. The kids come with their work done; they are funny and they are kind. Really, they are just…it really is a joy.‖ Professional Learning Communities The principal at CHS, having praised the professional development that IB teachers receive, described how his administration took the idea of enriching teacher quality one step further by instituting Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Pointing to ―the mere fact that you have now got a culture that talks about the craft,‖ he was explicit about the goals underlying this policy shift. ―You‘ve got teachers teaching teachers, and the research is clear: Teachers teaching teachers is the most impactful model you can possibly have in an American high school.‖ PLC‘s were also expected to inject a sense of community among the faculty. Noting how ―the educators of the past equate professionalism with autonomy,‖ an assistant principal added that PLCs were instituted to signal that such an attitude, one that allowed teachers to persist in isolation ―is no longer the accepted way.‖ In support of this directive, both administrators and teachers gave examples that showed how general education classes were moving towards more common curricula and standardized assessments. According to the IB coordinator, PLCs provided a space where IB-trained teachers could influence their colleagues, especially in IB-style evaluation techniques. And many IB teachers did report that in their PLCs, they do exchange materials, work on assessments, and share curricular and pedagogical ideas and strategies. ―Because for certain types of classes the curriculum has stayed relatively stable because they need to‖ the main impact the IB-training has on non-IB classes was in the area of assessments.

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Recalling conversations she has had with an IB-trained teacher in the English Department, she explained that these departmental meetings provide a platform where she has heard teachers saying, like ―I am not satisfied giving that scantron final; it just doesn‘t feel right anymore.‖ So that can have a huge impact, even across the classes that aren‘t an IB-trained teacher‘s classes because with these common assessments, those teachers then need to buy into this idea that they will do different assessments. Similarly, an IB science teacher told me that PLCs have permitted IB-trained teachers to become a ―big voice for making that change, and now we are pulling a bunch of teachers out to work on an initiative to try to have this happen—this IB-style, or true experimentation-style for kids—to try to have it penetrate our entire Science program.‖ More anecdotally in the English department, an IB teacher describing a colleague who ―teaches just regular twelfth grade,‖ talked about how ―she went to IB training, and came back very excited about particularly the idea of the commentary. And so she is in a general 12th grade PLC, and other teachers in her PLC also teach commentary in the general 12th grade classes.‖ Keenly aware that their own anecdotes were just that, teachers would caution any generalizations with disclaimers, like ―that‘s an informal observation,‖ and ―I don‘t have any data to back that up, but that‘s what my gut tells me.‖ One teacher even suggested that while, ―yeah,‖ she had shared her training with her nonIB classes colleagues, ―but that doesn‘t mean that everyone was doing that.‖ At the same time, even as the administration was confident that PLCs would provide the impetus to move the faculty towards the standards-based curricular model of IB, some teachers cautiously noted how they were wary of the initiative. They argued that it has helped ―de-privatize‖ some of the more isolationist elements of the faculty, though ―it‘s still a challenge for some areas.‖ Part of the problem was attributed to the natural resistance that comes from an institutional culture that is prone to fads. As an IB teacher who heads the steering committee on PLCs explained it: ―I think teachers, initially when

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you hand down a directive, will see the black and white,‖ essentially rejecting it as matter of principle. The Problems—Organizational and Behavioral Barriers Heading in the right direction, one teacher felt his department had yet to fully take their PLCs seriously. ―We need to see that this is the kind of work we are supposed to do rather than a hoop to jump through to get the PLC taken care of, and that‘s kind of where we are at.‖ Several IB teachers described how ―we have really turned that corner‖ from resistance to acceptance. Some pointed to the fact that PLCs have been around for the last three years, which has allowed the initiative to get ―rooted‖ while others found that ―culture‘s tough; really tough to change.‖ And even as teachers generally ―think the administration has been doing a good job of pushing [PLCs], there are organizational and behavioral barriers‖ that remain. Providing a fairly spare and flat characterization of its potential impact, an IB teacher said that even though ―our PLC system is a little dysfunctional in the math department, every once in a while there‘s somebody who overhears a conversation and says, ‗Oh I am kind of interested in that.‘‖ Yet, part of the problem, he explained, was that ―a lot of our teachers feel like they are working hard enough as it is, and everybody is so focused on getting their own thing done that a lot of times you don‘t have time to collaborate and talk.‖ Noting that he, too, often got bogged down, he provided a following reflection: I went to a conference on PLCs in February, and there‘s were what I consider to be the top researchers in education presenting, and talking about how teachers working in isolation can only get students so far. And the idea of collaborating and sharing data and grading student work across the board, forces you to identify your standards and come up ways if kids are getting it and if they are not, and what to do when they are not. And I think—the biggest connection I can draw is that I know that as a teacher I know that I am not isolated in my little IB classroom.

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Most teachers showed they held a similarly positive understanding of the policy as well, and that the essence of the PLC experience was the ―idea that any student has a very similar experience regardless of who their teacher is.‖ Still, like many IB faculty interviewed, one teacher found this directive ―theoretically‖ sound, arguing that students ―absolutely should feel like they had a strong experience, and that they should feel like they were challenged…but I mean those are nebulous qualities.‖ Without specific measures to hold teachers accountable for cooperating with their respective PLCs, the tendency to backslide was considered common. At the same time, attempting to normalize the teaching and learning experience, something administrators believe the IB epitomizes, was a feature of PLCs that IB teachers found ―stifling.‖ Several teachers who are ―big fans‖ of the PLCs, and who ―think PLCs really are a mechanism to counter some of those problems‖ that naturally occur when teachers are left on their own, also expressed some reservations for these ―mandated get-togethers.‖ Among the more prominent barriers hampering PLCs from assisting the administration‘s claim that IB-training benefits non-IB students was organizational in nature. Because PLCs are designed to bring teachers together ―by department and course,‖ several IB teachers talked about how this arrangement limited the extent of their interaction with their non-IB colleagues. For example, one IB teacher said that since ―what I teach, nobody else teaches, I really don‘t have a home; I don‘t have a PLC home.‖ She described how her fellow IB teacher ―and I have often been a PLC, and right now just [the IB coordinator] and I are a PLC.‖ A similar arrangement was noted when another teacher explained that he teaches an IB course ―completely on my own because it‘s so small.‖ Having the only section of a course in his department essentially meant he would no one to collaborate with during that subject‘s PLC. He did go on to say that he is ―a part of a PLC, though it‘s an AP History PLC. [The other AP teacher] and I are in this

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PLC, and he‘s teaching TOK [which is an IB class] and I am teaching IB Economics, and we both teach AP US History.‖ In each instance, if the course had two teachers, the IB teacher explained that they meet with the other IB teacher in their department. As a result, when it is time for teachers to attend their PLCs, and the 10th grade general education History teachers come together to discuss teaching and learning, the 11th grade IB History teachers do the same. Taken together, these two teachers show how four teachers, who between them teach all the sections in four areas of the most advanced courses offered at CHS, can remain isolated in a system designed to encourage sharing. Moreover, the fact that they are all at the top-end of the hierarchy suggests that the most advanced skills acquired in IB-training may not ―trickle-down‖ in the way advanced by explanations of the claim. When an IB teacher does have a PLC with general course-level faculty, the notion that they can promote increased rigor among their non-IB colleagues was not always the case either. Fearing a potential backlash among their colleagues, those that did work across curricular tracks urged caution. And even as they expounded on the virtues of their IB-training, integrating it through a mandated directive was not considered wise; ―in fact, that would be abrasive.‖ For example, one IB teacher commented: I think that it is a productive area for staff development. I do. But I would like teachers to be curious about it, and to choose to kind of know. I think there is too much resentment about, you know, that the IB is elitist, or that it‘s just for those special few. Reflecting on how the original cohort of teachers selected to initiate the program felt like they had to behave, a former IB teacher put it to me this way: Well, I remember when we started this whole process, and I think we all had to be really careful about not upsetting teachers who weren‘t going to be teaching IB, not making it feel like something exclusive, elite club where we are getting a lot of advantages— Because I think there is always that idea of equity, right? Admitting that she did not ―know what we did except to be careful to be too excited, or flaunt the kind of the good gig that IB can be,‖ appeared to suggest that efforts

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to reduce potential tension among the faculty resulted in secrecy rather than sharing. Withholding mention of the advantages in this way, there was a conscious effort to downplay all the perks of attending to their position. More importantly, keeping it quiet in order not to upset those who might not participate seemed to hinder the shared capacity anticipated by the administration. This reluctance to share appeared to contradict some of the transfer predicted by the administration, who believed the investment would naturally filter out among faculty, and multiply through collegiality. Just as those IB teachers who decided to remain quiet about their teaching assignments in order to minimize conflict, a similar reticence emerged when IB teachers discussed how they might be received in their PLCs. A veteran IB teacher, who actually serves as a trainer for state-wide IB-training, put it to me this way: You know, I don‘t think anyone wants the IB to be the tail that wags the dog here because we have good programs, and people do very good things, and…I don‘t think, personally within our department, I don‘t think there is any antagonistic feeling about IB, but I wouldn‘t want to say, ‗everyone do it the IB way because that‘s the right way‘ because that‘s the first thing that gets my back up. The backlash could be harsh in some cases too. For instance, a few IB-trained teachers appeared to be frustrated by what they perceived as an unproductive venue for serious efforts to improve the quality of the non-IB courses in their departments. One example in particular was emblematic of this sentiment. In a follow-up interview, a former IB teacher described the lack of progress she had made towards improving the assessments in her subject area. Teacher: Our PLC, it‘s interesting, I hate it a lot. We still haven‘t been able to move the wall of teachers away from a Scantron final exam. So I had to give a Scantron final in January, and I have to do it again in June. And it‘s just dumb. I would much rather have them write something. Researcher: And you couldn‘t get it? Teacher: They wouldn‘t, they just wouldn‘t budge.

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IB teachers also found fault with the process of generating assessments to this end, which seemed to keep them willfully removed from the general education teachers in their departments. As stated earlier, the main impact the IB-training was expected to have on non-IB classes was in the area of assessments. Commenting on how IB external assessments provide a different framework for collaboration than those expected to emerge from departmental PLCs, one of the two IB English teachers described the relationship she has with her colleague: I feel like [she] and I, we share ideas, we listen to each other, we use what we get off of each other, we trust each other—it just feels natural to me, and I don‘t feel like either of us is ever telling each other what to do. We are not trying to lock-step things, but that‘s in part because we each still have our own thing. In a sense, she explained that because they are not negotiating assessments—the IBO creates and evaluates those—their work together is much more about discovering ways to provide the best ―skill-based curriculum.‖ Such an arrangement, she argued, frees them to remain individuals, as they support each other more naturally. By contrast, she commented how attempts to replicate this relationship through the PLCs not only misses the point, but ―being forced to collaborate in different ways‖ was something she feared. And honestly, some of it comes from what‘s happening with PLCs right now, and what‘s happening with common assessments right now, and this idea…you know, I get concerned about, we have to come up with—whoever this we is—any number of different personalities and teaching styles and beliefs, and abilities really— to come together and create a document that we are all supposed to use thereafter. In summary, PLCs are the most deliberate action of the administration designed to magnify the potential impact of the IB program on the whole school. Attempting to replicate IB ideas, and enhance teaching capacity, this initiative officially encouraged teachers to build common assessments and rubrics. These efforts were explicitly geared towards changing the nature of teacher relationships; in effect, the policy idealized collegiality. In doing so, PLCs sought to steer the faculty at CHS away from isolationist

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tendencies, though behavioral and organizational barriers appeared to hinder this transformation. Professional Development: Who‘s on Deck? The principal at CHS saw the IB as an important lever in creating greater teaching capacity throughout the system. Contrasting the way promotional systems in most public schools operate, where ―you have to sit for your ten years of tenure, waiting for Joe to retire‖ he argued that ―the introduction of the IB helped lift the rigor in the entire school‖ because ―it gave more opportunities to teach rigor.‖ Put simply, adding the IB program provided additional openings to teach advanced classes, and ―now you have more faculty members that can really start setting goals.‖ An assistant principal agreed that the aim of improving the faculty was ―fairly specific‖ too, and expanded upon the administrations‘ strategy ―to integrate more people into the IB program‖ in the following way: When people express an interest, we try to get them slotted in, so that they get some of those professional development opportunities, and start working with those kids, because we see it as a way to help them improve across the board. The IB coordinator described her role in the process, highlighting its informal nature ―where people will just come for a visit or send me an email and say ―I am really interested in this, I‘d like to pursue this…‘‖ and then, part of my job is to work with the department chairs and administration just to say all right we‘ve got this next group of teachers, or a pair, or this person in this department is interested in being trained…you know, I like to and I need to keep the administration in the building aware of essentially who‘s on deck, to be there in case we need them. The desire to build teacher capacity, therefore, was a ―specified‖ goal that the administration hoped to achieve, as they were looking to be sure teachers are ready to teach IB should the opportunity arise. Getting IB training was ostensibly available to ―people who would like to teach the courses,‖ as well as those who ―wanted to do the training because they want to be just

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more knowledgeable.‖ A department chair told me that, as far as he could tell, the training was there for anyone who was interested enough to clamor for it. ―At least in my world,‖ he explained ―there‘s one person that would like to get trained, but hasn‘t been able to yet. That‘s it.‖ He emphasized this point when he added how his department ―also offers the most AP and IB courses‖ at CHS. A veteran IB teacher agreed that you need to identify yourself, and gave an example of colleague who was not recruited for an eminent teaching assignment; instead, stating simply that she went to training because ―she was curious about IB and had heard that IB training can make you an overall better teacher.‖ The Superintendent talked about the availability of such Professional Development, as well as the possible limitations to its reach. Having already stated that the value of this training enhanced the quality of instruction throughout the system, I asked him if he would like to see all of the teachers get that kind of professional development. He agreed that he would, and that the resources were theoretically in place to do so over time; even so, he qualified the arrangement, adding “I don‘t know how realistic it is for them to expect to do it unless they are either on standby for a future assignment in IB, or teaching IB, but certainly I think it is the kind of staff development that all the teachers could benefit from.‖ Administrators were in agreement that the money for professional development was available, and IB teachers consistently credited the IB coordinator for prompting their initiation, as well as ―encouraging people who don‘t even teach IB to go to the training.‖ The superintendent even sounded off on how ―the coordinator for people doing training has been most supportive‖ in getting people ready for an IB assignment. Accordingly, the consensus was that if ―a teacher that wants to be trained, and is thinking about teaching IB, they will get it.‖ And even though there were several examples of teachers ―that have trained to teach IB that have never taught it, they‘ve gone to the training with the long term look at that possibility.‖ Getting in line for an advanced teaching assignment, however, had its own barriers.

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The Problems – Availability versus Utility IB professional development was commonly considered more useful to teachers who were in line to teach IB courses. An assistant principal also pointed out that the availability of the PD ―does depend on the cycle of teaching, and the size of our program, and some of those factors.‖ Several teachers who had received IB training talked about ―all of the innovation‖ that goes into the professional development, as well as ―all of the ideas‖ that they felt they gained through the experience. In particular, one teacher thought it was so worthwhile, she put herself in an administrator‘s position, and declared that ―if [she] could run it, [she] would have every one of [her] teachers trained in IB, even if they are not IB.‖ In the end, however, she submitted that her egalitarian vision was not entirely practical, admitting that ―it‘s expensive, and you can‘t give it to everybody.‖ Although most IB teachers considered IB training highly desirable, several expressed reservations about its utility, especially if there was little prospect of teaching an IB class. Veteran IB teachers talked about how the professional development centers around evaluation ―because the assessments are what you don‘t understand, and they are frightening.‖ One teacher said that she remembered ―being completely overwhelmed in the beginning,‖ and that much of what she encountered ―was like a foreign language because there was so much inherent to the IB program as well, but once you get past that, it becomes a familiar component of your teaching, and it‘s fine.‖ Making it familiar to one‘s teaching, however, many saw the need to use it. As one teacher explained: I mean it‘s just such specific training to actually teaching IB that I don‘t know about a teacher that is going to go off and you know and teach G, I don‘t know if they would embrace it the same way as someone who knows they are going to teach this, I‘ve got to really get the most out of it. In the end, the idea that it was highly specialized made it less likely to find application in general education courses, especially among those who had little prospect of using the

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training. Thus reservations about the appropriate reach of IB training revolved around its utility for non-IB teachers. Summary In the second section of chapter IV, I reviewed the three assumptions behind the claim for a whole school effect, describing the successes as well as the problems that each one evokes. At the outset, the notion that IB teachers would teach non-IB classes was detailed; and though splitting teacher assignments was believed to bring better instruction to all students, IB teachers tended to teach the highest-level courses. Similarly, professional learning communities were instituted to ensure that the entire faculty benefited from the training and knowledge of IB teachers, yet in many instances teachers experienced some degree of disconnect and isolation rather than a sense of community. And finally, even as IB Professional development was considered to be widely available for any teacher interested in participating, only teachers in line for an IB position end up taking part in it.

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CHAPTER V DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Introduction This chapter begins with a brief introduction to the problem addressed, alongside the principle findings of my research. I will then discuss in detail my findings regarding each of the two claims. The final section will offer my concluding thoughts and recommendations for future research. This study identified and examined the claims made at Choice High School for using the IB program to improve the whole school. Using case study methods, I sought to explore these claims through interviews with administrators and teachers who had experience with the IB. The two claims that I identified for whole school effect were, first - that IB benefits the whole school through a positive impact on enrollment; and second, that IB benefits the whole school as a result of IB-trained teachers teaching non-IB courses. Regarding the first claim, my research indicated that the IB did produce higher enrollments that generated more revenue for the school than the cost of the program; at the same time, the need to maintain high test scores appeared to result in the school keeping IB out of reach for the vast majority of students. On the second claim, I found that though ostensibly all IB teachers taught non-IB courses as well, in reality their nonIB assignments were almost exclusively advanced classes that served a similarly select percentage of the student body. The promotional literature on IB pointed to the theory supporting the two claims identified at CHS, but it did not explain how or why they worked in practice. More importantly, the institutional factors that mediated the implementation of the program to this end were obscured by the immediate attention required to maintain the positive outcomes.

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The notion that the IB program had the potential to act as “a pebble dropped in a pond, and its impact sends out ripples many times greater than the discrete delivery of the Diploma Program itself” was the central metaphor guiding this inquiry. Embedded in the image is the acknowledgement that even though the IB is not for everyone, it eventually impacts all. A powerful representation of how something so small can be so significant, such a suggestion has obvious appeal to educational reformers on both sides of the Equality debate. Yet rarely is the effect followed to the outer edges of its suggestion. If the IB is the pebble, and the school is the pond, when the IB is dropped into to the school, the area it impacts directly would be relatively small. And though such an impact is hardly spectacular, the waves of eventual energy undulating out are expected to have far-reaching ripple effects that promise long-lasting residual outcomes. These expectations therefore provide the basis for the claims. Claims of this nature should bring forth the following questions: What happens when the ripples of educational reform reach the shoreline, or boundaries in which they are placed? Do political realities force the energy back toward the center—toward the IB program itself? Open Enrollment: The Message is Clear? As a review of the literature on school choice showed, one of the expectations of using advanced programming to attract students in an open enrollment context was that such an arrangement would not only benefit the transferring student, but it would also have system-wide impacts, or ripple effects. The presumption, as Yin (2007) explained, was that “schools will compete to retain and attract students if their budgets are linked to enrollment levels” (p. 7; see also Goldhaber et al., 2005). Such competition would lead to innovation, and force schools to continually enhance the educational experience in order to provide “greater productivity” for its operating costs (Hoxby, 2002). Given these conditions, schools would need to innovate to remain solvent, offering potential students enticements and advantages in the most cost-effective manner possible.

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In an open enrollment context, the benefits of the IB are a result of its reputation, serving the school as a marketing anchor. Moreover, as the IB option in the district attracts a significant number of students—and the state-funds that follow—the school is empowered to spend more on system-wide improvements that extend far beyond the financial obligations the school needs to maintain the program. Put simply, good programs attract students, and attracting students is essential to maintaining programs. Conner (2008) summarized how advocates of advanced programming, like the IB, have argued that this scenario allows schools to promote a “straight-forward theory of change”: By introducing the IB Diploma Program, such schools could demonstrate their commitment to maintaining high standards, thereby retaining or reattracting students who would otherwise attend private schools. As these students returned to the school, average test scores on state mandated tests would rise, graduation rates would increase, and acceptances to selective colleges would go up, further enhancing the reputation of the school, attracting more motivated, high-achieving students, and perpetuating the cycle. (p. 335) This notion seemed to be at the core of CHS‟s decision to adopt the IB program, as the same logic was consistently present in interviews with both administrators and faculty, and among the district‟s promotional literature. And still, the findings outlined in this case study detailed how the reality of this strategy was anything but straight-forward. In this study, I found that using the IB to attract students (and the funding that follows them) allowed CHS to maintain and improve programs and facilities during a time that budgets across the state were facing considerable crises, forcing deep cuts and layoffs. Several upgrades to the facilities were evident, as well as some indicators that suggest improved academic achievement across the board. Indeed, one significant benefit of the IB at CHS was its apparent role in raising expectations, which are said to increase as part of the school‟s new association with excellence (Martinez and Klopnott, 2005). Through raised expectations, the IB is said to impact the school‟s culture, which initiates

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incoming students with higher expectations, and encourages more students to attempt accelerated coursework. Not only did CHS reattract students, but it also gained enrollments from neighboring public schools in nearby districts. In one sense, as students use open enrollment to participate in the IB program, the dollars that follow these students become critical to the financial well-being of the whole school, as well as the resources to fund the IB program itself. Put another way: without the funds that follow the students, the IB program would not be sustainable, nor would the district‟s ability to retain staff and maintain relatively stable class sizes overall. Thus the use of the IB program produced the intended, system-wide impact it promoted. In this way, CHS appeared to be in agreement with the theory of change that Matthews and Hill (2005) described whereby schools introducing the IB can demonstrate their commitment to high standards, attracting highachieving students who make the school look even better, and creating a cycle that serves to strengthen the whole school. At the same time, I documented how this strategy triggered other, less desirable outcomes; in particular, how the pursuit of prestige had the potential to operate as a double-edged sword. Conner (2008) had warned of this when he noted how, “schools might wonder if their newly refurbished reputation as an IB school will be compromised by an open enrollment policy that runs the risk of high attrition rates and low test scores” (p. 337). Protecting the product from a potentially “lethal mutation” (McLaughlin and Mitra, 2001) brought about by an influx of unprepared students, the question of access became strained. And although CHS did not respond to these potential threats with prerequisites and other „gate-keeping‟ entry criteria (Hughes and Karp, 2007), administrators and faculty alike were clearly concerned with preserving the signaling quality of the IB on several levels. One IB teacher epitomized these sentiments when he said, “if you allowed everyone to take IB—you made them all take the IB diploma—first

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of all, our test scores would decline dramatically versus the national average…[If] everyone has to take IB, what will that do to those scores?” Without spelling it out, the administrators and teachers at CHS understood that the students pursuing the IB advantages have a desirable profile: high-achieving, motivated, and willing and able to travel for the credential. Not only do these additional students bring money into the system, they are also believed to help create new academic and social norms that reinforce the scaling up cycle (Glennan et al., 2004). And still, if the goal of increased enrollment is to materialize, then the school is obliged to maintain a high-quality program. As a consequence, the school must protect the program by focusing greater resources on those students who have the ability to raise the profile of the school—ensuring that the IB class sizes are smaller, and that the best teachers are in charge of providing instruction in IB classes. The school, then, finds itself in a paradoxical situation: the notion that students will find CHS attractive was based on the perceived benefits they could obtain by participating in the prestigious program, but this prestige was the result of the IBO‟s assessments, which are highly rigorous, criterion-referenced examinations that provide the student, school, and community feedback about the program‟s health. Hence, the signaling power of the program depends on the ability of the school to produce politically acceptable performance levels. Good programs attract students in this scenario; therefore, if the school is to attract students, they must market a program that produces the outcomes that parents desire for their children. At CHS, this meant putting fewer students in classes with external examinations, and putting the most qualified teachers in charge of teaching them. In reallocating academic resources this way, members of the faculty who have proven they can provide results are increasingly teaching higher-level courses as they become available, making the number of students they are responsible for teaching decrease accordingly. From the interviews, it was clear that IB classes were indeed

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smaller than general education classes, and that the most accomplished teachers were disproportionately assigned to teach (and wanted to teach) the upper-level classes. Both of these trends were found in other case studies of the IB (e.g., see Mayer, 2010), and appeared to be a direct result of the demand for maintaining marketable test scores. A further complication with keeping IB class sizes small was that inevitably the size of non-IB classes would gradually rise. If we accept what IB teachers had to say about class size and its impact on the quality of instruction in general, and the number of writing tasks assigned in particular, the adverse effect on general education classes appears rather grim. In one sense, as non-IB classes get larger, there will be more grading for general education teachers, which had the potential to reduce the number of instructional activities assigned, thereby gradually reducing the quality of the educational experience for non-IB students. By extension, even though the measures to protect the program‟s integrity benefit the school by sustaining its marketability, keeping unqualified and unmotivated teachers out of the IB program had its owns set of less desirable, unintended consequences, as low-quality teachers would increasingly fill the ranks for the general population. And with each section of IB added, high quality teachers will teach fewer general education courses, which would further isolate faculty according to the status of their teaching assignment. This effect is similarly compounded as more students take IB classes since fewer high-performing students would be left to fill the general education courses. In this way, not only would lower-level classes end up with lowquality teachers, but also with a critical mass that most IB teachers found „difficult to move.‟ Another outcome was that the district chose to offer the less prestigious certificate option because the IB student numbers were too low to justify a diploma-only program. The administration had to sell the program‟s footprint to a school board who complained the IB was „elitist‟, unfair, and serving too few students for the price-tag. Opening the program up with the certificate option helped expand the IB‟s impact, as now 10% of the

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school would take at least one IB class, rather than 1% in a diploma-only scenario. This move not only helped the administration allay fears in the community that could have prevented their strategic plan from ever taking root, but it also proved to have unexpected rewards for both the students and the school. Accordingly, while the program was getting established, the certificate option allowed the IB to appear more equitable. As the program experienced this positive and productive growth, however, the desire to return to a diploma-only IB program was also acknowledged. Some IB teachers and administrators even openly lamented this departure from the prestigious diploma framework, and talked in their interviews about a future in which the certificate program will no longer be needed as a justification for the diploma program. This future plan to eliminate the certificate option suggested that the current trend of annual IB expansion may lose its force, allowing the IB program to contract. The original compromise was made to appear equitable; having successfully done so, the IB is poised to return to its more limited and illustrious roll. In addition to these challenges, Open Enrollment plans have been criticized for increasing stratification between schools (Hargreaves and Fink, 2006; Howe and Eisenhart, 2000). As higher-performing students leave one district, the receiving school would likely improve, and not simply through the reallocation of the funding for that student. These students would help raise the profile of their new host by boosting average test scores, and improving its academic reputation. Focusing on these gains, however, the inverse inevitably occurs at the sending school‟s expense. “For some communities, this kind of niche marketing will encourage schools to hunt for the best students, leaving secondary schools in poorer communities with lower achievers who have not been chosen elsewhere” (Hargreaves and Fink, 2006, p. 19). And while this study did not seek to measure the impact of Open Enrollment on the schools losing students to CHS, the potential for the adverse effects of school choice in this regard was clearly understood by the administration and faculty at CHS. Furthermore, Hargreaves and Fink (2006) found

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that when school administrators used the IB to attract open enrollment students, not only did this practice “harm students and teachers in neighboring schools, [it] ended up damaging its [own] lower-status students as well as teachers who didn't enhance the school's image or mesh with its mission.” (p. 17). Lubienski (2005) found that schools consider the type of student they will attract more than the amount of funding their choice policy might produce. As a result, the decision of districts to open or close their boundaries to non-residents is tied to its relative status in the local market hierarchy, as well as its proximity to metropolitan areas. From the official documents and promotional literature, it was clear that the district marketing strategy was central to its plan to bring in students, promoting growth within its domain. The interviews confirmed this goal. Even as the teachers understood the district‟s prerogatives, their unease stemmed from an awareness that the advantages their school gained would come at a cost for the sending schools; in particular, nearby public schools that would be sending them their students. In the end, any angst expressed was diffused by the policy context that necessitated the district‟s Public Relations tactics, and was further subsumed by the notion that the strategy worked to keep their jobs safe and sound. The reason so few low-SES, inner-city students were applying to CHS had less to do with official gate-keeping, and more to do with issues outside the district‟s purview. In particular, as the cost of arranging bus service for anyone to attend any school was both legally untenable and financially impossible1, CHS essentially culled its open enrollment from the suburbs that are absorbing the inner-city population. As a result, there was consensus that CHS was fortunate in avoiding a negative flow of low-performing students who might have forced the district to concentrate on the more difficult, longterm efforts, like remedial classes, to remain competitive. Instead, maintaining the 1 For an excellent discussion of the legal issues surrounding choice-based integration, and the factors that inhibited Minnesota from successfully desegregating its schools, see Hobday, Finn, and Orfield in the William Mitchell Law Review, 2009, vol. 35: 3.

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school‟s high performance levels was a matter of marketing to those who had the means to get the best education. Tracking Teacher Training: Professional Developments? Just as the IB‟s reputation was expected to attract students through Open Enrollment—building capacity from a managerial perspective—it is also purported to raise the quality of education by strengthening the teaching core from within. At base, IB authorizes specialized, high-quality professional development, and those chosen to get trained teach throughout the curricular tracks. And since teachers with IB training also teach non-IB courses, it is expected that the rigor associated with the IB will reach students not directly participating in the program. In this way, the findings moved from the general strategies (and their contextual interactions) to the more specific tactics underlying this process. The claim that IB-trained teachers teach non-IB classes was ultimately affirmed. The majority of IB teachers at CHS were assigned to a regular course load, which meant they taught 5 classes. But while it is true that teachers who have received IB training do teach other courses in their departments—out of necessity, as the size of the program remains too small to take up their entire schedule—the nature of those courses are rarely those that general education students take. Several teachers explained that when they are not teaching their IB classes, they are teaching other high-level courses, such as AP (advanced placement) or X (accelerated) offerings. Two explanations emerged as to why IB teachers rarely teach general education courses. The first is externally governed by the demand for marketable test scores, as discussed in detail earlier in this chapter: the administration needs to keep producing high scores for advertising purposes. In order to ensure that the strongest teachers—those who teach the externally evaluated courses—are satisfied, their non-IB assignments are kept attractive. Teaching IB, AP and X courses is highly desirable because the class sizes are

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smaller, the students are „easier‟ to teach (they come ready to learn), and the material is more engaging. The second explanation is internally governed by personal and professional considerations of prestige and validation. In much the same way that the school‟s reputation is tied to the results on scores from these courses, IB teachers took pride in their success. Part of it was meeting the standard, which became a badge of honor. Altogether, it became apparent that the perception of the most accomplished teachers at CHS was closely linked to their assignments in higher-level courses. Like a student moving through the system towards graduation, teachers advanced in their career by navigating a hierarchy that purportedly rewarded merit with status. And still, this process was more political than it was chronological, making it naturally more difficult to gain access to the first level. The teacher tracking system at CHS, therefore, is analogous to student tracking. In the same way that students need to have a baseline level of achievement in order to consider advanced academics, teachers also needed a performance record to get in line for an advanced assignment. As IB teachers have attained prestige, they were also seen as projecting their privilege, which has created some tension among an increasingly stratified faculty. As it became clear that aspiring towards higher-level classes was fairly common, I found that such a climb was not only hard to begin, but sometimes made with consternation as well. Because it is ideal to have two preparations, once the newly-trained teachers are given an advanced prep, they often forfeited a lower-level class from their former schedule. In doing so, there was some guilt confessed in taking these assignments, especially from teachers who felt that they have had „success‟ teaching Remedial and General-level courses, and who had spent considerable energy advocating on their behalf. Giving up these classes left a few teachers questioning their own motives as well. They seemed to be aware that the qualities that brought them to consider IB in the first place also made them quite good with the lower-level students. More importantly, their

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concerns about the sacrifices they were likely to make were less about the amount of work they would be taking on with their new course loads, and more about who would be hurt by their absence. Another aspect of the claim of teacher impact is that the professional development opportunities required to teach IB classes would improve teaching capacity at CHS. In particular, with the introduction of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), the administration argued that it could help compound the positive impacts of the IB professional development. Discussing the merits of this initiative, the main idea communicated was how the IB would further filter out among the faculty when they came together in their PLCs. To this end, PLCs sought to normalize sharing among faculty by injecting a sense of collegiality into the work week. Mandating regular periods for teachers to meet, the expectation was that IB-trained teachers would enter their departmental PLC and provide an added level of expertise based on their IB professional development (PD). In turn, the non-IB teachers would gain insight into IB knowledge and skills, which they would bring back to their general education classes. As a result, non-IB students ultimately benefit from the training of IB teachers in much the same way— albeit, even more indirectly—as if they had a teacher who went to IB training. While the interviews confirmed these expectations, and anecdotes pointed to some progress in moving the faculty in the desired direction, like the sharing of teacher assignments, the intended effect of this initiative across academic departments throughout the school faced institutional barriers as well. Some teachers blamed an organizational culture resistant to change for the lack of progress in establishing productive „learning communities‟; others pointed to a lack of credible accountability to ensure proper implementation of the directive, casting doubt on the efficacy of the claim. In particular, the same types of behavior that kept IB teachers from encouraging their colleagues to participate in IB professional development opportunities appeared to hinder the transfer of knowledge and skills during the PLCs.

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The interviews suggested that general teachers may be harboring some resentment toward IB teachers for being elitist, and that IB teachers at times may be avoiding interactions in order to minimize conflict. As IB professional development was attended almost exclusively by IB teachers, the structural definitions of the PLCs, which brought teachers together by department and course, served mostly to further segregate faculty by status. As a result, the main beneficiaries from IB professional development were IB teachers themselves, who reported little incentive in changing the status quo. Summary of Discussion The results of this study point to concerted efforts to utilize the IB program to benefit the whole school; indeed, there was evidence to support the claims that progress has been made towards this end. At the same time, however, several contextual factors seemed to limit, even adversely affect, the stated goals. As such, even as the social, political and cultural features of the school helped provide the framework for its two claims, these features also influenced their potential impact over time. In the case of the first claim, which suggested that using the IB as a marketing tool to attract students and improve enrollments, the plan was simple: The more Diplomas, the greater the prestige; the greater the prestige, the more attractive the school becomes to prospective students. As more students are drawn to attend CHS, more funds are available to improve the whole school. As more students take rigorous courses, more students benefit, and the orientation of the whole school becomes more academic. In this way, the bigger the IB program, the better it is for everyone. The plan may be simple, but its implementation introduced multiple limitations. For instance, built-in gatekeepers kept poor students from CHS, allowing the school to game the system, or „steal from their neighbors‟ talent‟ without violating any rules. Maintaining luster means protecting test scores, which in turn means smaller IB classes (and larger general classes), and a channeling of the most talented faculty to the IB (and

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the less-talented faculty to the general education classes). This produces a shift of talent towards the least needy, as embodied by the school‟s master schedule: 3000 general education students must take a backseat to 40 IB students. Taken together, these factors help explain how a commitment to excellence in an open enrollment context complicates the egalitarian goal embedded in the claim. Put another way, bigger is not always better for everyone, though it can be especially good for some. The school‟s second claim is that IB teachers benefit all students through teaching non-IB courses and through sharing the benefits of IB professional development with the entire faculty. Here, too, the implementation revealed multiple problems that challenge the accuracy of the claim. The clear trend in teacher assignments in the school shows that teachers with advanced training are more likely going to have schedules that favor working with advanced students. What is more, as the program gets bigger, fewer IBtrained teachers are going to maintain a split schedule, and the impact of the IB on nonIB students, therefore, will likely decrease. Additionally, as the program grows in the future and the certificate option is phased out, inevitably fewer sections of IB courses will be offered. The number of diplomas may still serve as a powerful recruiting agent—increasing the school‟s budget for system-wide improvements—but fewer students will have direct access to the program, and fewer teachers will be needed for training. Having more sections of IB consolidated among fewer faculty could compound the perception that these teachers are elitist. My findings suggest that stratifying teachers in this way can prompt backlash, making high-status teachers less willing to share. As a result, the PLCs could become even less productive.

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Directions for Future Study Going into this study, I used theoretical sampling to determine the place and participants (the site and subjects) that would most likely provide answers to my research questions. As a result, I selected a school that was the least fettered by the problems of improving schools through the implementation of the IB, as identified in the literature. In addition, having IB training was selected as a basic criterion for inclusion: as anecdotal evidence highlighted and a preliminary review of district documents affirmed, one of the claims for whole school effect involved using IB-trained teachers to teach non-IB classes, as this strategy would infuse IB skills and knowledge throughout the curricular tracks. Moreover, a secondary impact was also expected as these IB-trained teachers shared their IB professional development with colleagues in their departments. . What this study found, however, pointed to the potential problems the IB may have generated among the faculty; in particular, how adding more advanced academics exacerbated the teacher stratification between those who had received training and those who had not. Such an outcome could be significant too, as dividing teachers this way appeared to jeopardize the essential import of the claim that IB training would benefit all students at CHS. This tentative finding, however, was mostly accidental; indeed, I was fortunate that my sample criteria permitted interviews with faculty whose stories pointed to this undesirable outcome. In particular, conversations with an aspiring teacher who had IB training and who had yet to be assigned to teach an IB course helped illuminate the nature of teacher tracks at CHS. Her comments not only served as important background for the status trajectories at CHS, but helped frame another teacher‟s story that might have gone untold otherwise. These two teachers, alongside some comments made by a few teachers still teaching lower-level courses, helped identify this potentially adverse effect; and still, these teachers were selected incidentally.

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This study could have benefitted with the clarity of hindsight, and stronger studies going forward should actively consider and explore these variables with greater attention. That said, more research is needed to provide a better understanding of how teacher status could develop or divide a faculty when the IB program is introduced, and a thorough investigation of teacher tracking would involve input from teachers without IB training. In addition to a more inclusive sample, research focused on these factors would be further strengthened by cross-case analyses of data collected at multiple sites, as well as longitudinal data that considers how time interacts with teacher tracking. Examples of research questions might include: 

Does the introduction of the IB program curriculum strain relationships among faculty?



Are faculty relationships affected by the introduction of the IB program?



In what ways are faculty relationships impacted by the introduction of the IB program?



How do teachers at IB schools perceive those with IB training?



How do teachers at IB schools perceive those with IB teaching assignments?



Do these perceptions vary among the faculty? Why?



Do these perceptions change over time?

Additional qualitative studies might focus on classroom observations or student perceptions. For example, case studies of individual teachers who teach both IB and nonIB students with a focus on instructional practices across the curricular tracks are warranted. Do general education students receive IB-infused educational experiences? What impacts are observable, and how might they be evaluated without externally evaluated examinations? Quantitative studies that look into the trends highlighted in this case study could include surveys of IB teachers to see whether influences outlined here are idiosyncratic,

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or whether they are indicative of the adverse ripple effects schools can expect when they adopt the IB. Further studies on the relationship between the certificate option and diploma program could reveal more about the value of single courses versus comprehensive programming in educational reform. Martinez and Klopott (2005) pointed to a difference between AP and IB for this reason, though little has been said about the IB and this possible variation of program design and implementation. Quantitative studies could approach this subject by charting the frequency of certificate use, as well as pointing to the geographic regions where this „trend‟ occurs. Additional studies in open enrollment districts could also look more closely at the impact of the IB on „sending schools‟ in both academic and non-academic domains. To be sure, some preliminary work has emerged while this research was underway2; still, as indicated by the number of suggestions offered here, the results of this case study suggest that many more questions remain. Concluding Thoughts This case study set out to explore the seemingly straightforward ideas about how the IB was expected to improve the educational experience for all students at the school. At base, I utilized a visual representation of the IB as a pebble dropped into a pond to help conceptualize and conduct this study. In answering my first research question, two main claims were identified for the impact of the IB on non-IB students, which then served as the basis for the rest of the study. Accordingly, answering my second research question, I attended to the explanations elicited from the interviews, and followed them as they rippled outward like waves from the participants to those outside the purview of the program. As I did so, I found that the IB program benefitted non-IB students—but

2 See, for example, a recent survey (2010) conducted by the IB Global Policy & Research Team in collaboration with the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, Indiana University called “High School Student Engagement Among IB and Non-IB Students in the United States: A Comparison Study”.

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only to a certain extent. In answering my third research question, the results suggested that such a metaphor is both purposeful and promising for understanding how and why the IB influences the pond where it is placed. And perhaps more importantly, how the people and place can ultimately serve as a shoreline—or boundary—placing upon the program their own sets of demands. Thus, the interaction of the IB with the school has the power to provide, as well as the tendency to take away.

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