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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can we just agree that McKinley is a good choice for many students.  Is it the best school in the city right now?  I don't think anyone has said that.  But our city needs good choices for High School.  McKinley Tech is one of them.

In previous years, many white students would make a point to find their way into Jackson Reed or School Without Walls.  Given the change in admission for SWW and the fact that it's much harder to find a spot in Jackson Reed than it was, things are changing.  Another change is that many charter middle schools are decent and even good.  More white students are looking for a place to attend high school and won't be attending SWW or Jackson Reed.  If your kid has a spot in those schools, great!  If they don't why can't you find a way to be glad that there are more spaces available in other schools around this city?  Why does that feel like a threat to you?  I'm glad that there are students going to good schools and getting 3s 4s and 5s from McKinley Tech.  That means it is a good option for some students and has the foundation to be a good option for even more high achieving schools down the road.  I just don't get why anyone would see this reality (and it is a reality, not a delusion) as a problem.[/quote]

Because it is a mediocre school and DCPS can and should do better. If you want to cheer on a mediocre school that is supposedly our science application school, then yay for you I guess. I would like to see higher quality not just for my kids but for all kids in this city. [/quote]

So… you’re mad about a DCPS school that does a great job of meeting students where they are and helping them learn STEM topics (and that students and teachers love ) because… it doesn’t match YOUR ideal of what a magnet school should be?  You seem insane. [/quote]

+1 The argument that the school should be ”higher quality” is completely tone deaf.  First of all, McKinley is a title 1 school—overall, kids going there will have fewer resources than kids going to JR, or SWW, for example. Kids with a team of tutors and other paid for extracurriculars will almost always outperform a school with kids who do not have those things. That doesn’t mean what the school offers is subpar, or that the teaching is subpar. It means that the school is a real life mirror of one part of our world—there are smart and motivated kids who have not had the kinds of opportunities as some others, but they still want to go to a good school. McKinley accomplishes a lot with these kids, and very motivated kids can do incredibly well there. As many do. Arguing that the school should be better makes no sense in this context. How about let’s erase all systemic inequities, and then let’s see if schools seem so different? Or let’s not let rich parents in higher tax brackets raise hundreds of thousands for their schools while parents in lower tax brackets can barely raise a few hundred. If you really cared about better schools for all, you’d be working on those issues rather than mindlessly and ignorantly trashing a very good school with hard working teachers and kids. As others have pointed out—not all kids will thrive in an environment like SWW or Banneker. Many aren’t ready, and they’d probably be counseled out, if they even made it in the door. But maybe they can thrive at a good school with more leeway that is prepared to give them more support. (McKinley will take kids with a 3.0 average—not that all have a GPA as low as 3.0 coming in, but some will.)  Not every kid is going to be a 4.0 student (shocker), but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a place for them. It’s like ya’ll want the Ivy leagues of H.S., and the schools for the failing kids, but heaven forbid there is an in between. If you don’t think the school is for your kid, great, don’t send them. No need to try to make a good school seem terrible. Ya’ll are like the Harvard grads who think all state colleges are trash by default. [/quote]

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