The achievement of Cleveland’s public school students continues to be appalling low, and the city’s students are falling even further behind their peers from other urban areas.
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education released city-level data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Cleveland is the only Ohio city that participates in the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), which reports data from twenty-one cities across the United States. NAEP--the "Nation's Report Card"--administers the assessments to a representative sample of U.S. students.
Among the cities that participated, Cleveland’s test scores placed them second-to-last, with only Detroit scoring lower. The percentage of Cleveland students who met NAEP’s proficiency standard are as follows: fourth-grade reading—9 percent; fourth-grade math—13 percent; eighth-grade reading—11 percent; eighth-grade math—9 percent. In comparison to 2011 (the last round of testing), Cleveland’s test scores were flat. Meanwhile, Cleveland’s average test scores in the four grade and subject combinations fall 30 to 37 points below Ohio’s statewide average NAEP score.
Startling also is the increasing gap between Cleveland’s test scores and those of other large cities. Consider the “Average Scores for District and Large Cities” trend charts (available here, here, here, and here and reproduced below). As one can see the achievement data (and the trend) for Cleveland’s students are grim, bleak, and unacceptable—and are yet another stark reminder that Cleveland’s bold education reforms, which have just begun, must be vigorously implemented and with all due haste.
Increasing gap between Cleveland achievement and large cities - Average scores, 4th and 8th grade math and reading, 2003 to 2013
SOURCE: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA). NOTES: “Large city” includes students from all cities in the nation with populations of 250,000 or more including the participating TUDA districts. NAEP scores are reported on a scale of 0 to 500.
