2002 Trial Urban District AssessmentIntroduction IntroductionIn 2002, NAEP conducted the first Trial Urban District Assessment in reading and writing. Federal appropriations authorized for the No Child Left Behind Act supported a multi-year study of the feasibility of a Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) of Educational Progress. In 2001, after discussion among the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), the National Center for Education Statistics, and the Council of the Great City Schools, NAGB passed a resolution approving the selection of five large urban districts for participation in a TUDA, a special project within NAEP. The District of Columbia is part of main NAEP and was included in the TUDA for purposes of comparison. The trial design calls for a sufficient sample size to make reliable district-level comparisons. Because individual states have assessments based on a variety of scores, scales, and test designs, districts have not been able to validly compare themselves to a district in another state. For the first time, the TUDA makes such comparisons possible. What Was Assessed?As in the national and state assessments, students participating in the NAEP 2002 TUDA in writing were asked to write for three main purposes: narrative, informative, and persuasive. The NAEP 2002 TUDA in writing used the same writing framework as the national and state assessments. In fact, the assessment instrument, procedures, and time-frame were identical with those in the NAEP 2002 assessment. Who Was Assessed?The TUDA was conducted in five urban public-school districts: Atlanta City, Chicago School District 299, Houston Independent School District, Los Angeles Unified, and New York City Public Schools. New York City took part in the assessment but met the required participation guidelines only at grade 4. Sampling for the TUDA was modeled on the procedure for sampling states. The number of participating schools ranged from 38 to 76 per district at the fourth grade and from 15 to 69 per district at the eighth grade. The number of participating students per district ranged from 924 to 2,037 at the fourth grade and from 1,109 to 1,778 at the eighth grade. How to Interpret NAEP ResultsAny noted differences in performance between groups of students are based on statistical tests. The tests consider both the size of differences between averages or percentages and the standard error of those statistics. Every test score estimate has a standard error—a range of a few points plus or minus the score—due to sampling error and measurement error. Statistical tests are used to determine whether the differences between average scores are significant. Only statistically significant differences are cited. The reader is cautioned to rely on the reported differences in the text and tables, which are statistically significant, rather than on the apparent magnitude of any difference. The standard errors are available in the NAEP Data Explorer, where there are procedures to test for statistically significant differences. For more information on scale scores, achievement levels, and statistical significance of differences, go to interpreting NAEP results. Scale Score and Achievement-level Results for the Trial Urban District AssessmentIn order to provide a context for the data collected in the TUDA, results are presented for students attending public schools in the nation as a whole, as well as for public schools located in central cities across the nation. Following standard census definitions, a central city is a city of 50,000 people or more that is the largest in its metropolitan area, or can otherwise be regarded as "central," taking into account such characteristics as commuting patterns.
Download a copy of the Trial Urban District Assessment Report Card with more extensive results, including subgroup performance at the district level. Download a copy of a one-page district Snapshot report in writing. Explore the district data in more detail in the NAEP Data Explorer. There you will find data on demographic subgroup performance as well as contextual background data at the district level.
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