Prestigious Diploma Has High Schoolers Opting for a Higher Degree of Difficulty

Track goes--tennis stays. John Grisham, nope--Immanuel Kant, sure. Weeknight pizza with friends, no way--late-night studying, most definitely.

Pioneering a rigorous academic curriculum that’s new to Ventura County, Newbury Park High School students are taking some tough classes--and making some tough time-management decisions.

All in the pursuit of a prestigious International Baccalaureate diploma--a pre-college degree with worldly flair and academic clout.

“The point of high school is to learn as much as you can,” said Amanda Movahhed, one of about 80 juniors taking International Baccalaureate classes. Already in advanced placement classes, tennis and chorus, 17-year-old Amanda was one of the first to sign up for the International Baccalaureate--or IB, for short--program in this, its first year at Newbury Park.

Something had to give, so Amanda and classmate Morvarid Shahidi picked Thoreau and tennis instead of track, a more time-consuming pursuit.

“School is more important to me than sports,” said Morvarid, 16.

Serious, stylish Amanda, who dreams of Harvard, isn’t complaining either.

“Even though we’ll be really tired and exhausted by the end of [the program], we’re going to get a lot out of it,” she explained, taking a break from a recent English class.

With any luck, IB students say, the hard work will pay off in the form of enhanced learning and fat acceptance letters from Ivy League and University of California schools.

Official results of the program won’t begin to trickle in until spring 1998, when the first batch of students is tested and Newbury Park graduates its first seniors with IB diplomas.

But the decidedly unofficial results are in: The program is hard, students say. Really hard.

A football player, wrestler and a scholar, junior Jeff Judson started the program looking for a challenge. He found one.

While the IB course work is comparable to his other classes, there’s more reading and writing, he said.

“It’s a lot of work,” Jeff said. “I’m probably doing twice as much homework. I’ve had to do a lot more studying, especially for the tests” that will come at the end of his senior year.

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He adds: “But I’m learning a lot of things I don’t think I would have learned in high school if I hadn’t taken IB.”

Specifically, he’s studying Plato, capitalism and physics. He’s reading Edna St. Vincent Millay and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He regularly writes 25-minute timed essays on quotations, such as Albert Einstein’s “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Not too shabby for a high school junior.

“It’s an incredibly demanding program for everyone--students, teachers, everyone,” said Marcine Solarez, an English teacher who coordinates the IB program. “It’s very exciting, dynamic. The program wakes you up and puts you on your toes.”

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the IB program began more than 30 years ago as a standardized curriculum for diplomats’ children enrolled in foreign schools. True to its heritage, the program still has a worldly feel--and some hefty academic clout. Colleges from Yale and Brown to USC and UCLA grant college credit to students graduating with an IB diploma.

Worldwide, 720 schools--37 of them in California--offer the program. One of the state’s top-ranked schools--Fullerton’s Sunny Hills High School--has offered the IB program for more than a decade.

Looking to offer students a new academic challenge not available elsewhere in the county, Newbury Park was only able to begin the program with financial help from Sage Publications. The Newbury Park publishing house is covering the program’s annual $25,000 cost.

Drawing students from all over Thousand Oaks and even Camarillo, the program is attracting attention from other county school districts, Solarez said, but the cost of IB affiliation can be prohibitive.

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It is often likened to advanced placement classes, in which students take tests with the possibility of earning college credit. In fact, many Newbury Park classes--such as 11th-grade English, physics and American political systems--have a mix of students and carry the AP/IB designation in course handbooks. But crucial differences exist.

Students taking advanced placement, or AP, classes do just that: Take individual classes. A student with a knack for numbers might take AP trigonometry and AP calculus while skipping AP British literature.

But IB is a full program--or series of courses--that demands that students be well-rounded. Students must take English, a modern foreign language, social sciences, experimental sciences, mathematics and an elective--art, theater arts or psychology.

Three of those subjects are taken for two years, and the rest are taken for one. To earn the specialized diploma, candidates take a battery of internationally graded tests--which account for 80% of their course grade--in the six subjects during May of their senior year.

Unlike the multiple choice AP tests, International Baccalaureate exams stress writing and speaking.

“It encourages depth as opposed to superficial memorization of details,” Solarez said.

To that end, IB students take a theory of knowledge class that brings together philosophy, civilization and culture.

And there’s more. Students seeking IB diplomas must write a 4,000-word extended essay and complete 150 hours of community service during their junior and senior years.

“With journalism, track, and theory of knowledge class, I haven’t had any time for myself,” said a frazzled Natasha Behbahany, one of about 20 serious contenders for a full IB diploma.

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While she’s learning tons about discipline and time management, Natasha does miss her freedom.

“My time has been completely devoted to IB,” she said. “It’s really frustrating sometimes. I see my friends out, and they’re doing this or doing that. I’m writing an essay, reading a philosophy book or analyzing a question to death.”

All that writing and studying has scared off about 15 students since September, Solarez said.

Mike Meljac was among them. An average student who’s involved in his church and the service-oriented Key Club, the 16-year-old had to at least try the program.

The junior took the required classes. He began on his community service requirement--building a house in Mexico with his youth group and clearing hiking trails. Mike says he intends to continue those endeavors, but he won’t be found taking the IB exams next spring--too much pressure.

“I just wanted to do it because the standards of education are so high,” he said. “It’s like a challenge. But it got to be too much.”

FYI

There will be an informational meeting for parents about the International Baccalaureate program at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in the library conference room of Newbury Park High School, 456 N. Reino Road in Thousand Oaks. The meeting is open to all but is recommended for parents of academically strong sophomores.