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I am a high school student. I am writing this in the hopes that someone would care to listen to what I have to say about my education. I attend a magnet program at Boyd Anderson High, an inner city school where maybe 25% of the graduates pursue higher education. We have many problems at this school, from racial dissent between students, to militant authority figures. As a public school with low standardized testing scores, we rarely get adequate funding. Factor in an unstable administration, and you have a recipe for disaster. However, this school is home to an International Baccalaureate program; a rigorous course that sets a syllabus on the international level, and has on numerous occasions made me want to kill myself. The courses are hard and the coveted IB diploma can easily slip out of reach if you are not running on caffeine to get your work done. Although, as much as I feel that IB's wrath is bad karma coming back to me, I sincerely feel that it has saved my sanity from the horrors of the public education system.

The IB program is strategically placed in inner city schools to "attract smarter students" so the standardized test average of the school will hopefully, go up and the school can get more funding. Most of the "regular" students are black, from the islands, and a lot of the IB kids are white, Asian or Hispanic and more privileged. There is undeniable tension walking down the corridors of Boyd Anderson. The 10% of the school who are IB students are supposed to be the "smart kids" We don't have much of a chance to really get to know the rest of the school since we have completely different classes, save a few electives. We associate with those we hang around and as a result, at lunchtime, you'll see a crowd of students in the cafeteria and a "white people table." This table has gotten rocks thrown at it. A few security guards around school discriminate against IB students. Sometimes, they think we can do no harm and we are allowed extra freedoms. This, admittedly, is incredibly unfair and generates further hostility from the other students. Other times, the guards are almost determined to find something wrong with us and petty offenses call for exaggerated disciplinary action.

Beyond just prejudices, the environment at BA has somehow conditioned students to resign. Sitting in the library one day, I heard what was happening in the classroom next door. A teacher was repeatedly regurgitating what was in the FCAT handbook, trying to

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