More Resources Trial Urban District Assessment: Reading 2002 and Writing 2002

I'd like to commend the school districts that agreed to participate in this groundbreaking National Assessment of Educational Progress at the local level.

It takes guts to place oneself in the limelight of public scrutiny. These school districts raised their hands and said they were willing to be tested. They believe in their students and they have proved that they want to be accountable for results. I salute them and the others in education and public policy who recognize that testing is not something to fear but is something that must be embraced if we are ever to improve our results.

This report card is very important because now these urban districts can serve as a benchmark to the nation and to other urban districts. In a similar way, the historic No Child Left Behind Act requires that local report cards be disaggregated to see how certain subgroups of students perform. The idea behind disaggregation is that it will allow school officials and teachers to focus their resources so that the children who need help the most get it. It will be impossible to hide poor performance behind averages.

While the cities' overall scores are below the national average in reading and writing, the good news is that we can use this assessment as a benchmark for the future. Yes, there is room for improvement, and this assessment will help the participating districts determine what they need to do.

All the urban districts that volunteered to be scrutinized for NAEP recognize that they have a lot of work to do to raise not only overall performance but particularly to erase the achievement gap between economically disadvantaged students and their peers. But they have taken on the challenge and are asking for help from the federal government, the states, teachers and parents to get the job done. Let's respond to them with outstretched hands.

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