City-by-City Study Also Shows Racial Achievement Gap Reductions   

WASHINGTON, June 26 -- Student achievement appears to be on the upswing in the nation's big-city school districts, while racial achievement gaps may be narrowing, according to a new city-by-city analysis of student performance on state-mandated tests.    

In a report called Beating the Odds II,  more urban school districts showed mathematics and reading gains on state assessments in 2001 than a year earlier, signaling a possible upward trend, but with reading scores still lagging behind math gains.   

The percentage of urban school districts showing math gains in all grades tested increased to 62.3 percent in 1 from 47 percent in 2000, which the  Council of the Great City Schools reported in its first Beating the Odds study.   In reading, the percentage of urban school districts showing gains in all grades tested increased to 40.7 percent in 2001 from 35 percent in 2000.  

"The report presents an encouraging picture of the progress that America's Great City Schools are making, particularly in math," says Council Executive Director Michael Casserly. "Reading gains in city schools appear to be more modest."

Beating the Odds II give the nation "a second look at how its major city school systems are performing on the state assessments devised to boost standards, measure progress, provide opportunity and ensure accountability of results," stresses Sharon Lewis, the Council's research director.

The study reports  data on  57 big-city school systems in reading and math, presenting a profile of each.    

Four districts - Albuquerque, Anchorage, Broward County, Fla. (Ft. Lauderdale) and  Hillsborough County, Fla. (Tampa) - had the same or higher scores than statewide averages in all grades tested in both math and reading. 

The San Francisco and San Diego school districts also had the same or higher scores than their states in all grades tested,  but  in math and reading, respectively.  All other city school districts scored below the state average in varying degrees. 

More than 87 percent of all grades tested in the big-city schools showed gains in math scores, while some 76 percent of all grades showed gains in reading.  Significant progress was found in the fourth grade  in both math and reading, with a 95 percent improvement rate in math and  91 percent in reading.     

Closing Achievement Gaps

Racially identifiable achievement gaps  in math between white and African American students narrowed in 41.8 percent of the grades tested at a faster rate than the state, and 43.6 percent between white and Hispanic students.  

In reading, achievement gaps between white and African American students narrowed in 41.1 percent of the grades tested at a faster rate than the state, and 44.6 percent between white and Hispanic students. 

A whopping 90 percent of eighth grades tested in math reduced the white-Hispanic gap.  The biggest gap closure - 78 percent -- between white and African American students was in fourth-grade reading. 

Four districts - Austin, Charlotte, Fort Worth and Houston - were cited in the study as having narrowed achievement gaps in all of the grades reported.  

                                           The Urban Challenge  

Big-city schools face a number of challenges in educating inner-city students.  Urban schools enroll  students that are about twice as likely to be poor or to be learning English as a second language, and about 30 percent of all students of color in the nation. 

There are also resource challenges.More than 35 percent of urban school systems have per pupil expenditures below statewide averages.    

"Enough cities are now improving to begin asking why some are not," stresses Casserly.  "The data suggest that improvement, however modest, is possible on a relatively large scale - not just school-by-school." 

Improvement Strategies  

The Council and the Manpower Development Research Corporation (MDRC) have collaborated to conduct case studies on three school districts -- Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Houston and Sacramento - that have posted impressive gains as a result of their reform strategies.

The studies will determine how and why urban school gains are being made.  The results will be used to formulate a comprehensive strategy to accelerate the pace of urban school progress nationally. 

A report on case studies of urban school achievement will be released later this summer at a Washington press conference.

The Council of the Great City Schools is the only organization in the nation representing the needs of urban public schools. It's a coalition composed of 58 large city school districts. 

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