Park High School leaders want to "transform" their school from one of collective middling results to one with a solid core of high achievers and others who aspire to more fully develop their potential.
That's how Principal Efe Agbamu describes the rationale behind her decision to institute an International Baccalaureate (IB) program at the school. Preparations currently are underway to open the program to juniors in the fall of 2010, and shake hands with the first graduates in the spring of 2012.
"IB has a way of driving everybody toward that common goal," says Agbamu, who is in her second school year as principal of the Cottage Grove High School in the South Washington County district.
Agbamu had been principal for three years at Highland Park High School in St. Paul, which still has a very successful IB program. "IB came in and transformed that school," says Agbamu, intimating her hopes for Park High.
The transformation Agbamu and others would like to see involves students taking more rigorous classes and preparing themselves to compete internationally.
"We are in a flat world," says Agbamu, who like so many educators these days frequently invokes the theme of author Tom Friedman's book contending that borders and distance don't matter in today's global marketplace.
But getting the kids up to a world standard will require them to take more challenging courses, Park High officials say. "There are many kids in this building who should be challenging themselves more," says Aaron Pozzini, who is coordinating the program.
Many students at Park High are very bright, but the school doesn't have as many Advanced Placement courses or students taking them as could be, says Pozzini. Other kids who live closer to the school have chosen instead to attend South St. Paul High for its IB program, school officials say. Districtwide, South Washington County schools have four times as many students who attend schools in other districts than who leave other districts to attend schools there, according to state reports.
