PVHS Honors Programs - International Baccalaureate (IB) and Advanced Placement (AP)
The International Baccalaureate program is world renown for its comprehensive approach to education. Pleasant Valley is only one of 80 high schools in California and the only school north of Sacramento to offer the IB program. The IB program is a comprehensive honors program which tests students in six academic areas: English, Foreign Language, History, Science, Math, and a sixth subject exam taken either from a second Science, Art, or Drama.
Students who are attempting to earn the IB Diploma also must complete 150 hours of community service/self-enrichment and compose a 4000 word research essay on any subject of interest. Students who score 30 or more points on their exams (about half of our students do) earn one years credit at any UC campus. This is true for many other colleges as well. The IB diploma passing rate is about 90% with about 50% scoring high enough to enter college as sophomores.
About 500 students are tracking towards or taking at least one AP or IB test at any one time. We have about 200 participating at the junior/senior testing level and about 350 at the pre-testing (prerequisite) level. The exams cost about $85 each.
Students in the AP program can take any of 14 different academic and arts classes to obtain college credit while in high school. Our AP passing rate ranges from 70-90%, depending on the particular exam being taken.
We have 19 teachers in the Honors, AP/IB programs. Our goal is to attract more students into these challenging curriculums. Success at the high school level in the honors programs reduces the stress and expense once the student reaches the university level. Too many students who would benefit from the honors curriculum shy away from it in order to take a more “kick back” load during their senior year. This is exactly when they should be “cranking up” their load in order to be more successful in college.
Our needs vary from money for science labs (typically $85-250), drama scripts ($100-3000), art supplies ($50-1000), and supplemental textbooks and materials for English and the foreign languages.
In order to be an International Baccalaureate Honors Program school we have to pay fees for administration totaling $8,500 per year for administration fees. We also have a mailing bill (Fed-Ex) for all the Internal Assessments (they grade how the teachers grade) and the exams of about $1100 per year. The remainder is copy costs. All this now comes out of the school budget.
