This week we receive the first of three visiting IB teams. This team is comprised of international primary school educators that will assess our progress towards full implementation of the Primary Years Program, PPK-grade 5. One of the distinctive features of the International Baccalaureate is that we must prove we have met initial program requirements before we can identify ourselves as an IB school. We have spent more than a year submitting key materials (unit plans, policies, schedules, etc.) in advance of this visit.
In the spring, we will receive detailed recommendations from the IB team. After showing evidence that we have addressed those recommendations, we anticipate official PYP authorization by the latter part of the summer. Authorization is not an end, but a beginning to continuous school improvement. In three years, an IB team will return to re-authorize our school, holding us then to an even stricter accounting of our pedagogical and assessment practices. Authorization visits for the Middle Years (MYP), grades 6-10, and Diploma Programs (DP), grades 11-12, will occur Fall 2016.
In June 2012, Baldwin published its intention to become an IB school in Caribbean Business, and was the first school in the history of Puerto Rico to become an IB candidate school. We are the only school in Puerto Rico with candidacy in all three programs, and will become the first IB Continuum (PYP, MYP, and DP) School in Puerto Rico sometime next summer. The IB full continuum is the international standard for excellence in college preparatory education.
We have accomplished much over the last four years: a school-wide skills and concepts map; continuous professional development in pedagogy and assessment; school-wide policies in assessment, language, differentiation, and academic honesty; the implementation of criteria-informed assessment; new skills-based reporting formats in PYP and MYP grades; upgrades to critical academic and technological infrastructure; and a shift towards inquiry-based pedagogy. We continue our work, honing our practices and improving our delivery of core pedagogy and curricula. We endeavor to be the school by which others judge themselves, one without peer in the Caribbean, counted among the world's best.