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Friday, January 13, 2012

Small school resists meeting the fate of a larger one it replaced | GothamSchools

Small school resists meeting the fate of a larger one it replaced | GothamSchools:

Small school resists meeting the fate of a larger one it replaced

Ama Willock urges DOE officials not to close her son's school, Middle School for the Arts in Crown Heights

As Mayor Michael Bloomberg touted the success of the small schools opened during his tenure in his State of the City address, families and staff from one of them were preparing to fight the city’s closure plan.

The Department of Education opened Middle School for the Arts, or M.S. 587, in 2004 to replace M.S. 391, a much larger school that was persistently low-performing.

But the Crown Heights school never fulfilled its promise. Last year, only 13 percent of the 334 students met state proficiency standards in reading, and only 11 percent were proficient in math. In December, the city proposed to