The end of the 2025-2026 school year brings the end of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at State High.
The IB is an advanced learning program that has enhanced the education of countless students since its inception in 1968. In terms of educational strategy, IB aims for more of a holistic approach towards its diploma students, who are between the ages of 16 and 19, priding itself on an education more suited for real-world experiences and opportunities.
According to the program’s website, “Through the [Diploma program], schools are able to develop students who have excellent breadth and depth of knowledge, flourish physically, intellectually, emotionally and ethically, study at least two languages, excel in traditional academic subjects and explore the nature of knowledge through the programme’s unique theory of knowledge course.”
In simpler words, the IB program tries to give its students an education they can carry into a professional setting, and from the words of the students themselves, they’ve hit the nail on the head.
“The IB program has given me so much, and my favorite part of it is the opportunity to work with people in your community and outside of your community, too, that you would never have had the ability to communicate with beforehand,” senior IB graduate Sarah Ocampo said.
The opportunity to communicate and work within a community is one of the main tenets of the IB program as a whole, showing up in various projects required for a diploma.
The Extended Essay (EE) and Internal Assessment (IA) are two of the major projects required for IB students, which push them to leave their comfort zone. These projects have opened an abundance of doors for those who choose to embrace them.
Ocampo’s extended essay topic focused on the relationship between social media, political violence, and domestic terrorism in the U.S.
“I had the opportunity to work with people in the intelligence agencies, to learn about all the contributing factors of the domestic terrorism, and I talked to a CIA officer who discussed how ‘incel’ culture and misogyny play a role into domestic terrorism,” Ocampo said.
These connections established by way of the IB Program go much further than one-time interactions, as some go on to become meaningful contacts and connections within specific industries.
“For my math Internal Assessment, [my research question was]: ‘Can you predict sports outcomes using distributions and statistics?’,” senior IB graduate Isaac Poole said. “The IB Coordinator, Dr. Schreiber, actually gave me a connection with Austin Mock, a sports analyst who has worked at The Athletic and ESPN.”
Outside of professional settings, the projects brought forward by the IB gave students greater opportunities to be more open and involved in their communities academically.
“…it’s a great experience to build that confidence, to be able to interview and then just an enjoyable experience to get to talk to [the community],” senior IB graduate Maya Birkenholtz explained.
Although it’s not uncommon for certain courses to induce better learning habits, IB graduates proudly proclaimed that the program made them think more critically about the issues at hand.
“IB serves a different sort of purpose in comparison to AP. IB is more applicational work rather than memorization, which I’ve taken AP classes before, and I can confidently say that is how I approached AP. But the IB program, yeah, I loved it,” Ocampo said. “Except the exams,” she jokingly followed up.
Reflecting on their experience within the program, the IB graduates were able to say, with confidence, that they wished the program remained in place. Many referenced the diverse learning experiences they underwent or the camaraderie that the small class sizes created.
“This program was something that was special and really unique, and that would go a long way towards helping me and my classmates be better people, be better students, and find more success in whatever we wanted to pursue,” Birkenholtz said.
“My math class only has 12 or 10 people in it. My business class this year only has 10 people in it, so it’s a lot more informative because you can get to know people on a more personal level and learn a lot easier because you have greater connection with your teacher,” Poole said.
In a fairly unexpected turn of events, it was announced midway through the 2024-2025 school year that the IB program would cease operations at State High. The school board discontinued the program in a four to three vote, citing concerns with costs, scheduling issues and student enrollment. Now, with plenty of time to reflect and fully contemplate the outcome, IB graduates have developed their thoughts and opinions on the subject, largely united.
“Yeah, [the closure] is disappointing. I wanted my brother to do IB, and I want students after me to do IB, because the experience that it has given me you can’t replicate anywhere else,” Ocampo said.
“I reacted by just being kind of disappointed in the school for taking the superficial economics and [making] a decision based on that versus considering the impact that this program is having on our school and our students,” Birkenholtz echoed.
Regardless of the future for the IB Program here at State High, the final class of IB graduates still carried extremely positive sentiments towards their experiences and history with IB.
Three of the 10 IB diploma recipients recapped and reflected on their experiences with the program:
“Frustrating, challenging, but rewarding,” Ocampo said. Ocampo will be attending Penn State University in the fall, double-majoring in International Politics and Public Relations.
“I’d honestly just recap it not only as a great learning experience, but also as a great way to bond and make new friends and meet new people,” Poole said. Poole will also attend Penn State, and he will major in quantitative finance.
Birkenholtz will be attending Macalester College in the fall, entering with an undecided major, yet left the IB program with this closing remark: “As a student, and then as a person, and an individual in our world, it’s been fantastic.”
