City-Level National Tests Show Slight Math Growth, No Change In Reading

City-Level National Tests Show Slight Math Growth, No Change In Reading:

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City-Level National Tests Show Slight Math Growth, No Change In Reading

Posted: 12/ 7/11 09:59 AM ET

The report card on America's urban schools is in, and the grades aren't good.

On Wednesday the U.S. Department of Education released the results of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress's Trial Urban District Assessment, a low-stakes test administered by the research arm of that agency.

The data, which looked at 21 urban school districts, shows that urban education still lags behind the country's suburban and rural schools, and that while cities gained a bit of ground on math, reading scores were stagnant. And where cities increased their scores, high-income students did the heavy lifting.

"There's nobody who's performing at advanced levels," said Mark Schneider, a vice president of the American Institutes for Research, who previously administered the test at the Department of