In 2003, 4th- and 8th-grade students in large central city public schools were outperformed by their peers in other types of communities in reading and mathematics.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessed the performance of 4th- and 8th-graders in mathematics and reading in 2003. Examining the results by urbanicity provides an opportunity to compare the performance of public school students in large central cities with that of public school students in other types of communities. A large central city school is defined as a school in a central city within a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) of 2.5 million or larger.

The distribution of students in large central city public schools differs from the distribution of students in other public schools in notable ways. For example, in 2003, large central city schools were the only types of schools in which the percentages of Black and Hispanic students were greater than the percentage of White students in grades 4 and 8 (see table 14-1). In addition, schools in large central cities, on average, were more likely than schools in other types of communities to have more than 75 percent of their 4th- and 8th-graders eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and to have a minority enrollment of more than 75 percent.

Overall, in 2003, 4th- and 8th-graders in large central city public schools had lower average scores, which represent what students know and can do, in reading and mathematics than students in other public schools, including those in rural, urban fringe, and all central city schools (see table 14-2).

Achievement levels, which identify what students should know and be able to do, provide another measure of student performance. In both reading and mathematics, the percentages of 4th- and 8th-graders in large central city public schools who performed at or above Basic and at or above Proficient were lower than the national percentages at each level. In addition, the percentages of students in large central city schools performing at or above each of these levels were lower than the percentages of students in rural, urban fringe, and all central city public schools. For example, while 30 percent of all public school 4th-graders performed at or above Proficient in reading in 2003, only 18 percent of 4th-graders in large central cities did so, compared with larger percentages of urban fringe, rural, and all central city students (34, 32, and 22 percent, respectively).