The International Academy (IA) is a public, magnet high school with its main campus located in Bloomfield Township<!--It is NOT in the Bloomfield Hills city limits. See maps below-->, Oakland County, Michigan, with additional campuses in White Lake Township, Michigan and Troy, Michigan.
Students are required to earn both high school and International Baccalaureate (IB) diplomas. In 2020, according to IA, 92% of the graduates earned IB diplomas, compared to the world average of 79%.
Foundation
The school was founded at the initiative of Lambert Okma, who proposed it to the Bloomfield Hills School District in 1992. Okma previously taught economics at Bloomfield Hills Lahser High School. While teaching at Lahser, Okma attended a series of seminars with the educational outreach coordinator of The Federal Reserve Bank of Detroit, where they discussed how they felt that there was a necessity for education to respond to rapidly increasing globalization. Their response was to propose "a high school with an emphasis on developing skills and personal attributes needed to succeed in the international arena, using the international baccalaureate as its core."
International Academy opened in August 1996 with Okma as principal, and the school had its first graduates in May 2000. The Okma campus is officially hosted by the Bloomfield Hills School District, and the campuses collectively are managed by a consortium consisting of the Avondale, Berkley, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Clawson, Huron Valley, Lake Orion, Rochester, Royal Oak, South Lyon, Troy, Waterford, and West Bloomfield school districts.
Okma retired from his position as principal at the end of the 2008-09 year, though he continues to work as an IB consultant for other districts.