The top reported proficiency rate is 23% in English language arts. The lowest is 13% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Marvin L. Winans Academy of Performing Arts
Marvin L. Winans Academy of Performing Arts is a Michigan charter district organized around a performing arts mission. The district's directory lists two schools, an elementary and a middle school, and both are now closed. Because the schools are no longer operating, a parent reading this today is looking at a historical picture rather than a live enrollment option. What follows is a read of the academic record the district left behind, drawn from the most recent state assessment data available.
The tested grade range ran from third through eighth grade, which is consistent with an elementary-plus-middle configuration. State testing data is present for the 2022-23 school year across math, English language arts, science, and social studies. Class sizes at each tested grade were small, which is typical for a niche charter program and worth keeping in mind when interpreting any single year's results: small cohorts can swing sharply from year to year.
In math, proficiency was low across every tested grade. Most grades fell into the bottom of the state's reported range, with seventh grade the only exception, where a small portion of test-takers reached proficiency. Eighth grade math, assessed through the PSAT rather than M-STEP, also landed in the lowest reported band. Average scale scores were reported for each grade, but the proficiency picture is the clearer signal: very few students were meeting state benchmarks in mathematics.
English language arts told a somewhat different story. The lower elementary grades remained in the lowest reported range, but proficiency rose as students moved into the upper grades. By seventh grade, roughly one in five tested students was proficient, and by eighth grade the share reaching proficiency on the PSAT was notably higher than in any other subject or grade. This suggests that the school's language arts instruction may have been building momentum in the later grades, even as the early grades struggled.
Science and social studies results were available only for fifth and eighth grade, as Michigan tests those subjects at those points. Both subjects sat in the lowest reported bands, with eighth grade science showing a small share of proficient students. Social studies had no students reaching proficiency in either tested grade.
No enrollment figures, demographic breakdowns, free-or-reduced-price lunch rates, English learner counts, or special education data were available in the records we received. Without those, it is hard to contextualize the academic results against the student population the district was serving. The performing arts focus is part of the district's identity, but no program detail, course catalog, or extracurricular description was provided, so we cannot speak to what the arts curriculum actually looked like in practice. Housing, community, and economic context were also absent from the data.
The district brief turned up no evidence of curriculum changes, funding referendums, or other parent-relevant shifts in recent years. Given that both schools are now closed, this is consistent with a district that has wound down operations rather than continued to evolve. The closure itself is the defining fact for any parent encountering this name: whatever the academic trajectory was, the district is no longer enrolling students. A family interested in performing arts education in this part of Michigan would want to look for currently operating alternatives and ask how those programs balance arts instruction with core academic support, especially in the early elementary grades where this district's results were weakest.
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