With World Growing Smaller, IB Gets Big

Students take part in a team-building exercise called “Poly Bones” in an 8th grade physical education class at South St. Paul Junior High School.

—Scott Cohen

Amid heightened concern about preparing students for a global economy, the academically demanding International Baccalaureate program is catching on fast in U.S. schools.

By Scott J. Cech

South St. Paul, Minn.

In a large black-and-white photograph hanging in Jane Stassen’s office, 1930s-era construction workers perch on a thin steel beam some 70 stories above New York City, precarious but undaunted as they read newspapers and eat lunch on a break.

It’s no accident that Ms. Stassen, the director of curriculum and instruction for the 3,200-student South St. Paul school district, keeps this image on view above her desk. She sees a parallel to the cash-poor district’s plan to become what would apparently be the first public school system in the nation to offer the demanding International Baccalaureate program to all its students by next fall.

“We’re going confidently out on a limb,” Ms. Stassen explained. As to why a small community best known for its long-gone meat-packing plants would choose to put itself in the vanguard of education reform, district officials say the driving force was pretty cut and dried: the need to prepare students to...