International Baccalaureate at Minnetonka

It's working!

   When the present members of our School Board (Erin Adams, Carol Eastlund, Dave Eaton, Judy Erdhal, Peggy Stefan, Bob Quam, Bill Wenmark) voted unanimously in November 2003 to bring IB to Minnetonka, they knew we’d be facing budget cuts.  But they were committed to the excellence Minnetonka is known for, and to providing appropriate options to help our 7,600+ students achieve their goals.

    It worked!  From a modest beginning in the Fall of 2004 with 11 Diploma candidates, IB at Minnetonka has grown to 46 students enrolled in the 2-year Diploma program in 2005-06.  These students take 6 traditional classes each day, such as English, history, math, biology, foreign language, and art; they volunteer for 150 hours of community service and write a research paper before they receive their IB diploma. There are 122 other students taking individual IB classes in combination with other classes.

    Minnetonka’s AP program continues to serve our students, too.  A record number of AP Scholars – 146 - were named at Minnetonka High School in 2005. MHS had 116 AP Scholars in 2004.  read more here

    While colleges like to see challenging classes on students’ transcripts, it’s important to remember that students don’t receive college credit for completing AP classes; they must take the official AP exams and score a 3, 4 or 5 , depending upon each university’s policy.  Minnetonka teachers have a good record of preparing students for these tests.

   Students can receive college credit for IB, too – again, depending upon their successful completion of the program, their official test scores and their university’s policy.

   IB and AP can serve different types of students.

-         The IB diploma program is a full curriculum for grades 11 & 12; it's structured differently from the menu of AP classes. 

-         AP is actual college curriculum; IB is a college-preparatory curriculum.

   -    Minnetonka's IB program is still growing, so IB students spend time with

        each other in most of their classes; this can be an appealing way to make a

        large school like Minnetonka seem smaller. 

-         Most Minnetonka students choose to wait until college to take college-level classes; families with 11th & 12th graders can now choose between AP, IB, 2-3 levels of regular classes or some combination of these to meet the needs of individual students.

IB is one of many choices at MHS

 PSEO – Post Secondary Education Option – is also available to Minnetonka students.  The district pays for these students to attend classes during the regular school day at a post-secondary institution (usually Normandale College, but sometimes the University of Minnesota or other local colleges).  Students can receive college credit for this.

 Mentor Connection allows Juniors and Seniors to apply to spend most of their school day “shadowing” a professional in a particular field.

 Mini School, a “high school within a high school” offers a learning environment for kids who aren’t succeeding in regular classroom settings at MHS.  Often, the only other options available to these kids are costly to them and to our community: dropping out of high school or attending an alternative learning center at district expense. The Star Tribune West Metro section recently profiled two Minnetonka Mini-School graduates: one who owns and operates an aquarium store in TonkaBay and another who founded the very successful local landscape company, Arteka.