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This study examines whether students' enrollment in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program improves their ACT scores, probability of high school graduation and probability of college enrollment. Using data on the IB enrollment status of 20,422 students attending thirteen CPS high schools from 2002-2008, it estimates that IB enrollment increases students' ACT scores by as much as 0.5 standard deviations and their probability of high school graduation and college enrollment by as much as 17 and 22 percentage points respectively. All of the estimates are highly robust to selection bias. All estimates are greater for boys than for girls. It also calculates that the IB Diploma Program is a cost-effective way to increase high-school graduation rates.

South Side High School in Rockville Centre pushed inclusion a step further this school year, requiring all 11th-graders to take the toughest literature course offered -- no matter what their academic standing. Principal Carol Burris said school officials want to elevate standards for everyone, so they're offering only one English class: International Baccalaureate Language and Literature, Higher Level. "The best curriculum you have should be the curriculum for everyone," she said.

Before relocating to Austin, I had spent eight years teaching math and/or science in Egypt, Mexico and Honduras at elite private schools that used American textbooks, American curriculum and were accredited by American institutions.  The majority of my students were not Americans, but graduated with a combination of diplomas: local, American and/or IB (International Baccalaureate). After graduation, nearly all attended college, mostly in the US, Canada and England, and a few remained in their own country for higher education. I proudly returned to the US, toting my international bag of creative, engaging teaching tricks, especially curriculum-based projects that I had created, ready to dazzle my American students. So, imagine my utter shock when resettling into American life, teaching at an Austin public high school, and discovering that the standards were actually lower. Moreover, my teaching creativity was all but stifled for the sake of "standardization" in the most controlling environment I had ever taught.