Gutsy move

It takes guts to place oneself in the limelight of public scrutiny," said Education Secretary Rod Paige last month in praise of six urban school districts' decision to expand the use of a federally sponsored test in their cities. "Gutsy" was the right description, since it yielded negative results about the districts' academic achievement.

In the first district-level administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), fourth- and eighth-grade students in six large urban districts (New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.) took trial NAEP reading and writing tests. Reading-proficiency levels were significantly lower in the urban districts; 66 percent of Chicago fourth-graders, for example, scored below a basic level, compared to 38 percent of fourth-graders nationally.

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August 23, 2003, Vol. 18, No. 32

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