Urban Assembly School for Media Studies, The

The Urban Assembly School for Media Studies, housed in the Martin Luther King Educational Campus, is a safe, orderly school with strong leadership and enthusiastic teachers, according to school surveys. Students have lots of opportunities to paint and draw.  

In one class, students imitated Jackson Pollack’s techniques of dropping paint on canvas. In other, they researched the animals that lived in their neighborhood in the 1600s, then created sculptures of them using live moss, according to the school website.

Most students come from Upper Manhattan and The Bronx. Attendance is a constant challenge and more than half the students miss more than a month of school.

Although most students enter with poor academic skills, three-quarters graduate on time. The school has above average graduation rates for student with disabilities and students learning English.  

Admissions: Education Option formula designed to ensure a range of students of different abilities. In recent years the school has had room for everyone who applies. (Clara Hemphill, web reports, November 2018)