Measuring Success
The ISB community and potential parents are understandably interested about the quality of our students’ learning, especially against challenging international standards. Over many years, the school leadership and the Board of Trustees have put into place a number of key performance indicators to ensure that we continue to provide outstanding educational opportunities for all our students. Below you will find a number of indicators that will inform you about school performance.
2023 IB Diploma Program Results
The Class of 2023 undeniably faced many challenges in preparation for their IB studies. Their entire High School experience was overshadowed by COVID-19 and all the disruptions that came along with spells in virtual learning. We are only now beginning to inquire into the long-term effects of the pandemic on education, but initial research clearly indicates that the pandemic had a negative effect not just on academics but also on our youth’s mental health. At ISB, we certainly saw evidence of both of these concerns over the last couple of years, more so than in previous cohorts in terms of IB readiness. These factors highlight the courage and commitment of the Class of 2023 in terms of their IB results when one considers the fact that these students were the first cohort in three years that had to cope with the full IB curriculum and assessment model, alongside a return to pre-pandemic grade boundaries. It makes us doubly proud of our students that even with these obstacles in front of them, the IB class of 2023 was able to achieve an ISB pre-COVID Diploma average of 34 points.
2023 University Acceptance Results
The High School has a team of four highly qualified and experienced counselors to help students be successful at school and navigate the process of selecting and applying to best-fit universities. Schools that our graduates are currently attending include Oxford University, Berklee College of Music, Brown University, University of California Berkeley, University College London, Columbia University, University of Hong Kong, KAIST, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, London School of Economics, University of Melbourne, McGill University, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island School of Design, Stanford University, St. George’s Hospital Medical School London, USC, Yonsei University, and Waseda University. We are so proud of the Panther Spirit spreading far and wide in 2022; from Hawaii to Hong Kong, Toronto to Tasmania, Amsterdam to Arizona – we wish our grads success in the next stage of their education. For a list of university acceptances and matriculations class of 2021-2023 please click here.
What ISB Parents Say
We believe that parent surveys offer useful information to gauge our success in achieving our Mission and in informing our school improvement agenda. To this end, we conduct three types of surveys each year: In November, we survey parents new to ISB in the past six months. In December, we survey parents who have left ISB during the previous year. In May, we survey current parents.
International School Assessment Results
Every 3 years, 10,000 students in each of 40 nations take the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). We administer the International School Assessment (ISA) each year at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 10th grades. Our scores are compared to those of students from approximately 200 schools in 60 countries. Because PISA and ISA are related, we can compare our 10th grade ISB students with those in the nations that consistently perform best on the PISA. The table below shows the results from the most recent PISA testing, and compares 10th grade ISB students’ scores to those from the top 4 scoring nations on PISA, and those from the USA.
Measures of Academic Progress Results
Each September and April/May, ISB students in grades 3 through 8 take the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test. Taken by more than 6 million students each year, this test measures student growth and achievement in Reading and Mathematics. Students take this assessment on a computer. If a student answers a question correctly, the next question is more difficult and vice versa. This means that we can gauge a student’s achievement more accurately, more frequently, and more quickly. Most important of all, we can measure actual progress by comparing students’ scores from one year to the next. This table compares ISB’s mean RIT scores for reading and math to the mean RIT scores in US schools. ISB consistently ranks above the 90th percentile in math compared to other schools, and above the 80th percentile in reading (an accomplishment when one considers that only a third of our students are native English speakers).
