Do CPS Schools Switch Students to IB DP Against Their Requested Classes? A Parent’s Experience
The crumbs of Javi’s frosted cereal stuck to the edge of his laptop as he scrolled through his senior year course schedule on a mid-June evening. I was folding soccer cleats and socks at the kitchen table, half-watching the rain streak the back window, when he went quiet. “Mom,” he said, “I don’t have any of my art classes.” Instead of the AP Studio Art and two drawing electives he’d requested three months prior, he was enrolled in two full IB Diploma Programme classes: History HL and English HL. Javi’s plan had been set for a year: apply to fine arts programs, spend his final year of high school building his portfolio, and skip the full IB diploma he never wanted in the first place. This wasn’t a small mix-up.
We thought we’d covered all our bases. Javi met with his counselor in February during course request season, talked through his plan, checked the right boxes on the form, and I sent a follow-up email the next day to confirm everything was logged. I’d heard enough about Chicago Public Schools scheduling glitches to double-check. So when I saw the schedule, my first thought was that it was a data entry error. It turned out it wasn’t.
When we met with his counselor a week later at the end of the school year, she sighed and leaned back in her chair, and was surprisingly honest. The school’s IB DP sections came up 17 students short after all course requests were finalized. Under-enrolled sections mean lost funding for the school, and if a section dips below a certain headcount, it gets cut entirely, which can mean lost teaching positions too. So they pull students who didn’t request full IB diploma status to fill the gaps. She said it happens every single year. I talked to three other parents at Javi’s soccer game that weekend, and all three had similar stories: one kid who’d requested auto shop to prep for a trade program got switched to IB Chemistry SL, another who wanted AP Computer Science for his engineering applications ended up in IB Psychology, even though he’d never expressed interest. It wasn’t just our kid.
It’s easy to get angry about this, and I was, at first. But the more I talked to teachers and other school staff, the more it made sense as a systemic issue, not a case of bad actors. CPS relies on extra funding that comes with IB programming, and keeping sections open is a priority for the whole school. It doesn’t mean they’re intentionally ignoring your kid’s plan, it means they’re making hard choices to keep programs running for everyone. That said, it doesn’t make it less frustrating when it’s your kid whose plans get sidelined.
What we learned through this process is that there are concrete steps you can take to fix it, if a change matters for your kid’s goals. The first mistake I made was only sending an email asking for a change. My initial note got a one-sentence reply saying no changes were available. But every CPS high school holds an in-person course adjustment fair the week before school starts, and I didn’t even know that existed until another parent told me. We showed up first thing that morning, brought two specific things: a printed copy of Javi’s college application list (all 8 of the fine arts programs he’s applying to don’t require an IB diploma, they just prioritize his portfolio and core grades) and a small printed portfolio of 10 of his best pieces to show how much time he needs dedicated to art class. Instead of opening with “this is unfair,” Javi said, “I get you need to fill spots, I just can’t take these classes because they’ll take time away from what I need for college. Can we look together for empty spots that haven’t been filled yet?”
Turns out, there was an open spot in AP Art that had been held for a transfer student who ended up enrolling elsewhere. The counselor just didn’t see it in the system yet because the transfer didn’t go through until the day before. We got that spot switched right there. We couldn’t get the second spot switched, because there was no open art elective, but we knew the rule: any student can drop an elective within the first 10 days of school without it showing up on your transcript. Javi dropped the extra IB DP class the second week of school, and does a supervised study hall the last period instead, which he uses to work on his art portfolio. That worked for us, even if it wasn’t the perfect outcome.
If your kid doesn’t mind taking an IB DP class, it’s not the end of the world. A friend’s kid got switched into IB Geography and ended up liking it so much he added it to his college application list. But if your kid has a specific plan, you don’t have to accept the first “no” you get. A few other small, concrete things I learned: Always check the schedule the second it’s posted, don’t wait until school starts to fix it. If you go in person, you’re way more likely to get a change than if you email, because counselors are swamped with hundreds of emails over the summer. If you can’t get a change before school starts, the drop/add window is a valid workaround; no one penalizes your kid for dropping an unrequested class they never wanted.
This year, Javi’s got most of the classes he wanted, but he’s still stuck with IB Theory of Knowledge that got added to his schedule when we dropped the extra class. He does the work, but it takes two evenings a week away from portfolio work that he’d rather be doing. We’re meeting with the IB coordinator next month to see if he can do a modified independent study for the class to free up more time, and we don’t know if that will work. This is just how scheduling works in a big public school district, right? Things don’t always go the way you request, but knowing that this is a common practice, not a random mistake, makes it easier to plan for. It’s not fair, but it’s manageable, if you know what steps to take.
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