SAN FRANCISCO — At San Francisco's Willie Brown Jr. College Preparatory Academy, enrollment has plummeted and student performance has lagged. School officials have decided it's better to close.

It's one of a very small number that have chosen to take that route.

For better or worse, district officials are reluctant to close neighborhood schools — even when they have been shown to produce poor results for years or even decades.

The U.S. Department of Education is devoting $3.5 billion — the largest amount ever — to turning around the nation's failing schools. More than 800 have been identified as "persistently low achieving."

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Of those, just 16 are closing. How effective the closures are will largely depend on where children are sent. Not all of the new schools are significantly better.

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