International Baccalaureate: An Urban Large Inner City Public Secondary School

Room: Huron

presented by Raymond Buniak, Diploma Programme Coordinator, Thomas Kelly High School

I will describe what happened over a seven-year period when an inner city secondary school on the Southwest side of Chicago introduced the IB Diploma Programme as one of its pillars for school improvement. This material is research based-- both quantitative and qualitative. It demonstrates that, given proper support, IB students from the inner city can succeed in this kind of program even if they habitually score in the 60th percentile on standardized tests. Internationalism is an important theme in an inner city portal zone.

Raymond Buniak, Diploma Programme Coordinator, Thomas Kelly High School
Dr Buniak was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. During the 1980's and 1990's he performed with some of the world's greatest musical and dance talent in a wide variety of venues. From this experience he wrote A Twentieth Century Treatise on the Trombone (1986). Starting in 1981 he began a career as an education professional on Chicago's North Shore. In 1994 he began working for Chicago Public Schools as an instructional development officer. Within his past portfolio are many grants, many innovations, and many kinds of programs. Realizing an IB Diploma Programme is just one of these projects.