McKinley Tech - a great school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...and also location. It is not at all convenient to Ward 3.

Ward 5 is becoming much more diverse, but my family was on the cutting edge of this trend and our kid is now a 10th grader. We were actually the only white family in our census block for a few years! That is no longer the case. I expect more white in the coming decade as more kids who live nearby and are white enter high school.

The other thing is that, even as someone who went to a high school that was very diverse (more black than white students) I was nervous about sending my kid to a school where he would be part of the 4.7% of white students. (The 3% number is wrong and the 4.7% number has held for two years, so white kids haven't been the "onlies" at the school for quite some time if ever.)

But, that said, I went to school in the South in the 90s. Racial tensions were much higher then because segregation was not a distant memory but something fellow students' parents had lived through. I think enough time has passed that it's a bit different now than then. It's pretty easy for us parents to project our experiences onto our kids, but they're really living in a very different time than the one we grew up in.

Should be "I expect more white kids to choose McKinley Tech in the coming decade...."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m in zone for Dunbar which is simply not an option. And won’t ever be until my kids have kids at the earliest. But I’m excited for McKinley tech to become a viable option and would strongly consider it regardless of my child’s interests. Art is a nice hobby.

One nice thing about the school is that, since it's a STEM focused school, they know the kids will need extra help in writing and include writing instruction in every class. As a professionally trained former writing teacher myself, I couldn't be happier that this is the case.

And, agree about art being a nice hobby. I attended a school with a large Conservatory for college, and I don't have any friends who graduated from the Conservatory and ended up making a living using their musical talents. That's simply not common. As my daughter nears high school, though, she's interested in Duke Ellington, and I won't discourage her, but also I'll emphasize the need to find a way to make a living outside of the arts.

Do you have a kid at McKinley? Just wondering how good the writing instruction actually is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKinley Tech sent people to MIT, Yale, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins last year. It’s a truly excellent school.

How well does it do with college counseling? I don’t mean to use the old saw, but a kid who can get into MIT probably does not need a ton of handholding in that regard. What about the kids who are more average and are aiming for state colleges or SLACs?

It sends a lot of kids to HBCUs. Which is not a knock. My kid isn't really into the college counseling part of his high school career yet, so I don't know, but I'm also interested to learn more. That said, I had no college counseling from my school and yet feel I applied and landed well.

Here's the link to the instagram account of the college and career office if you're interested in learning more:
https://www.instagram.com/mthscollegeandcareer/

They seem to be quite active and I like the schools listed that recruit on campus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m in zone for Dunbar which is simply not an option. And won’t ever be until my kids have kids at the earliest. But I’m excited for McKinley tech to become a viable option and would strongly consider it regardless of my child’s interests. Art is a nice hobby.

One nice thing about the school is that, since it's a STEM focused school, they know the kids will need extra help in writing and include writing instruction in every class. As a professionally trained former writing teacher myself, I couldn't be happier that this is the case.

And, agree about art being a nice hobby. I attended a school with a large Conservatory for college, and I don't have any friends who graduated from the Conservatory and ended up making a living using their musical talents. That's simply not common. As my daughter nears high school, though, she's interested in Duke Ellington, and I won't discourage her, but also I'll emphasize the need to find a way to make a living outside of the arts.

Do you have a kid at McKinley? Just wondering how good the writing instruction actually is.

I do have a kid at McKinley, and the writing instruction seems good. The main thing needed is to get kids writing, and they're definitely doing that. So much so that my son complains about how he's constantly writing!

[Anonymous]

I do have a kid at McKinley, and the writing instruction seems good. The main thing needed is to get kids writing, and they're definitely doing that. So much so that my son complains about how he's constantly writing!

Oh great to know! My son (McKinley Freshman) definitely has a writing challenges and I am thrilled if they focus on that. I do feel their PR as a STEM school has created an impression that that is all encompassing. But my sense is that it’s much more well rounded than only STEM.

[Anonymous]

This is the first time in my kid's DCPS education that they aren't an only (or one of two) in their grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...and also location. It is not at all convenient to Ward 3.

Ward 5 is becoming much more diverse, but my family was on the cutting edge of this trend and our kid is now a 10th grader. We were actually the only white family in our census block for a few years! That is no longer the case. I expect more white in the coming decade as more kids who live nearby and are white enter high school.

The other thing is that, even as someone who went to a high school that was very diverse (more black than white students) I was nervous about sending my kid to a school where he would be part of the 4.7% of white students. (The 3% number is wrong and the 4.7% number has held for two years, so white kids haven't been the "onlies" at the school for quite some time if ever.)

But, that said, I went to school in the South in the 90s. Racial tensions were much higher then because segregation was not a distant memory but something fellow students' parents had lived through. I think enough time has passed that it's a bit different now than then. It's pretty easy for us parents to project our experiences onto our kids, but they're really living in a very different time than the one we grew up in.

A bit of history about McKinley Tech -- before school integration, it was a whites-only STEM school and was highly regarded.

After integration, the demographics flipped VERY quickly (became overwhelmly Black within a couple of years, bc whites fled), but the STEM part stayed, so it was one of the only schools where smart, black high school students could take very difficult science courses with real labs, etc. This is a very recent history, of course, and I've spoken to people who lived this (went to McKinley Tech in the 60s and 70s).

It's a good school. It was a white school, and then it was a mostly black school. Now it seems to be actually integrating, which is wonderful -- that was always the goal!

[Anonymous]

What is the earliest grade that you can take AP Cal? What are their AP Cal and AP science scores?

What about their SAT score averages?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...and also location. It is not at all convenient to Ward 3.

Test scores I can agree with but the location is a cop out imo. Plenty of parents WOTP/EOTP take on hellish commutes for privates and schools thought of as "good".

Some people tolerate long commutes; a lot of us don't.

My STEM kid is at Walls because it is (barely) in range. McKinley is too far from us, such that the commute would be too disruptive to life. And Walls is good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the earliest grade that you can take AP Cal? What are their AP Cal and AP science scores?

What about their SAT score averages?

I don't know about AP Calculus and when you can take it. You would probably need to call the school and ask for that particular information.

In terms of granular AP data, I don't know where to find it, but the overall AP summary for DCPS for 2023-2024 is here:
https://dcps.dc.gov/publication/ap-score-data-sets

Their AP scores are comparable to Banneker and Ellington. They have a very high AP participation rate as AP tests are required for AP classes, which I don't think it the case everywhere.

DCPS SAT scores can be found here:
https://dcps.dc.gov/publication/dcps-data-set-sat

And, again, McKinley Tech's results are quite comparable to DESA and Jackson Reed, which parents on DCUM consider to be viable options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m in zone for Dunbar which is simply not an option. And won’t ever be until my kids have kids at the earliest. But I’m excited for McKinley tech to become a viable option and would strongly consider it regardless of my child’s interests. Art is a nice hobby.

Of the 2 kids I know that go there, one is IB for Dunbar. Family was dead-set on McKinley, but were prepared to have to drive across the city to avoid Dunbar and applied widely for that reason. The kid seems to be having a pretty great experience -- very artsy, but also really, really into science and math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKinley Tech sent people to MIT, Yale, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins last year. It’s a truly excellent school.

How well does it do with college counseling? I don’t mean to use the old saw, but a kid who can get into MIT probably does not need a ton of handholding in that regard. What about the kids who are more average and are aiming for state colleges or SLACs?

It sends a lot of kids to HBCUs. Which is not a knock. My kid isn't really into the college counseling part of his high school career yet, so I don't know, but I'm also interested to learn more. That said, I had no college counseling from my school and yet feel I applied and landed well.

Here's the link to the instagram account of the college and career office if you're interested in learning more:
https://www.instagram.com/mthscollegeandcareer/

They seem to be quite active and I like the schools listed that recruit on campus.

HBCUs like Howard and Spellman?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so why isn't this great school far more diverse? Why is it 3% white in a city where whites are more than 40% of the population these days? Just poor PR? Serious question.

Glad your teens are happy there thus far but I'm skeptical. You can shout "strong public options!" all you want. But the inconvenient truth is that few UMC families are convinced.

Original poster here. I had not wanted to get into this but feel I need to address this. As a UMC white mom myself, i was struck that my white friends had almost no info/personal insights on the school while all my AA friends highly recommended it, and rightly so. The only thing I can think, sadly, is the a) frankly bigoted and sadly engrained assumption/fear of being singled out as the “only white kid” has kept white people away and the racist view that majority black schools in NE aren’t safe/good and b) so many kids want to only go to schools with their friends and there is a clustering effect around the same public and charter schools. I’m sorry to be that blunt but otherwise I struggle to understand a rationale that makes sense. Certainly it’s a STEM school and that doesn’t attract all kids. But I struggle to see that as the key reason for the demographic composition.

Overall I just think the school (and the kids that attend) deserve recognition and I had wanted to just flag it for parents who struggled as I did to get sufficient information on it in this forum.

This +100. And it’s true of many other schools in DC. Schools get stuck in a chicken or egg scenario of there aren’t enough white kids, so white parents wont send their kids there, so then there’s never “enough” white kids for those families to feel comfortable. Meanwhile, they’re adding hours to their commute or paying private school tuition when they likely would have had a good experience at that school—as well as gaining the benefits of a stronger local school community and having your kid exposed to a broader range of people. As a UMC white mom of a child at another predominantly Black school, the amount of conversations I have with white parents who say “we wish we could go there, it’s just not there yet” is tiresome.

How much is this about race and how much is it about class?

I want to send my child to schools that have a cohort (at least 25%) of students working at or above grade level in both ELA and math. This almost universally does not happen at schools that are majority at-risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so why isn't this great school far more diverse? Why is it 3% white in a city where whites are more than 40% of the population these days? Just poor PR? Serious question.

Glad your teens are happy there thus far but I'm skeptical. You can shout "strong public options!" all you want. But the inconvenient truth is that few UMC families are convinced.

Original poster here. I had not wanted to get into this but feel I need to address this. As a UMC white mom myself, i was struck that my white friends had almost no info/personal insights on the school while all my AA friends highly recommended it, and rightly so. The only thing I can think, sadly, is the a) frankly bigoted and sadly engrained assumption/fear of being singled out as the “only white kid” has kept white people away and the racist view that majority black schools in NE aren’t safe/good and b) so many kids want to only go to schools with their friends and there is a clustering effect around the same public and charter schools. I’m sorry to be that blunt but otherwise I struggle to understand a rationale that makes sense. Certainly it’s a STEM school and that doesn’t attract all kids. But I struggle to see that as the key reason for the demographic composition.

Overall I just think the school (and the kids that attend) deserve recognition and I had wanted to just flag it for parents who struggled as I did to get sufficient information on it in this forum.

This +100. And it’s true of many other schools in DC. Schools get stuck in a chicken or egg scenario of there aren’t enough white kids, so white parents wont send their kids there, so then there’s never “enough” white kids for those families to feel comfortable. Meanwhile, they’re adding hours to their commute or paying private school tuition when they likely would have had a good experience at that school—as well as gaining the benefits of a stronger local school community and having your kid exposed to a broader range of people. As a UMC white mom of a child at another predominantly Black school, the amount of conversations I have with white parents who say “we wish we could go there, it’s just not there yet” is tiresome.

How much is this about race and how much is it about class?

I want to send my child to schools that have a cohort (at least 25%) of students working at or above grade level in both ELA and math. This almost universally does not happen at schools that are majority at-risk.

McKinley Tech is 38.1% economy disadvantaged, which is not the same thing as at-risk technically, but same basic idea. It's not a Title I.

The CAPE scores for ELA show a large majority of students on or above grade level. The math scores aren't as good, but they do have a lot of kids scoring a 3 so near grade level, and you have to remember that the best math students don't take the math CAPE because they took Algebra I and Geometry in middle school. Weirdly the Algebra II CAPE isn't shown, that's strange.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so why isn't this great school far more diverse? Why is it 3% white in a city where whites are more than 40% of the population these days? Just poor PR? Serious question.

Glad your teens are happy there thus far but I'm skeptical. You can shout "strong public options!" all you want. But the inconvenient truth is that few UMC families are convinced.

Original poster here. I had not wanted to get into this but feel I need to address this. As a UMC white mom myself, i was struck that my white friends had almost no info/personal insights on the school while all my AA friends highly recommended it, and rightly so. The only thing I can think, sadly, is the a) frankly bigoted and sadly engrained assumption/fear of being singled out as the “only white kid” has kept white people away and the racist view that majority black schools in NE aren’t safe/good and b) so many kids want to only go to schools with their friends and there is a clustering effect around the same public and charter schools. I’m sorry to be that blunt but otherwise I struggle to understand a rationale that makes sense. Certainly it’s a STEM school and that doesn’t attract all kids. But I struggle to see that as the key reason for the demographic composition.

Overall I just think the school (and the kids that attend) deserve recognition and I had wanted to just flag it for parents who struggled as I did to get sufficient information on it in this forum.

This +100. And it’s true of many other schools in DC. Schools get stuck in a chicken or egg scenario of there aren’t enough white kids, so white parents wont send their kids there, so then there’s never “enough” white kids for those families to feel comfortable. Meanwhile, they’re adding hours to their commute or paying private school tuition when they likely would have had a good experience at that school—as well as gaining the benefits of a stronger local school community and having your kid exposed to a broader range of people. As a UMC white mom of a child at another predominantly Black school, the amount of conversations I have with white parents who say “we wish we could go there, it’s just not there yet” is tiresome.

How much is this about race and how much is it about class?

I want to send my child to schools that have a cohort (at least 25%) of students working at or above grade level in both ELA and math. This almost universally does not happen at schools that are majority at-risk.

McKinley Tech is 38.1% economy disadvantaged, which is not the same thing as at-risk technically, but same basic idea. It's not a Title I.

The CAPE scores for ELA show a large majority of students on or above grade level. The math scores aren't as good, but they do have a lot of kids scoring a 3 so near grade level, and you have to remember that the best math students don't take the math CAPE because they took Algebra I and Geometry in middle school. Weirdly the Algebra II CAPE isn't shown, that's strange.

Last year's CAPE scores, show that 79.4% of McKinley Tech students are BELOW grade level in math and 48% are BELOW grade level in ELA.

Not particularly impressive, especially for a school that has selective admissions and a tech/STEM emphasis.