Hello, this is Dr. Peggy Carr, Associate Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Welcome to Ask NAEP, an online Q&A session about the findings for the NAEP 2009 Mathematics Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) report. I hope you've had time to look at the results on the Nation's Report Card website, and that I can answer any questions you may have about them. I have a team of NAEP specialists with me to make sure your questions are addressed thoroughly, so there may be a slight delay between the time you submit your question and the time the answer appears.

We are usually able to post answers for all questions, even after the Ask NAEP session ends at 3:00. If you cannot stay online for the full time, a complete Ask NAEP transcript will be available online after our discussion. I'm interested to hear which results you want to talk about.

Before we begin answering your questions, I would like to discuss the way in which the results of the TUDA assessment supplement and enrich the results of the national and state assessment in mathematics, released in October.

At the national and state levels, we saw no change in scores at grade 4 since 2007. This was the first time that scores leveled off between two assessment years since the early 1990s. However, a closer look at those urban districts that participated in the mathematics assessment reveal that fourth-graders in large cities nationally recorded higher scores than in 2007, and perhaps most encouraging is the fact that these gains in large cities were primarily the result of positive score increases in the lower end of the student score distribution at the 10th and 25th percentiles. What this means is that the students whose scores would place them in the lowest 10th and 25th percent of the student group achieved higher scores in 2009 than students in those same percentiles in 2007.

It is important to remember when looking at national results and trends that aggregate scores often mask underlying patterns, so it is crucial to examine specific district results and the performance of different groups within the student population in order to gain a real picture of education in that content area.

For example, in 2009, all the racial/ethnic groups assessed at grade 4 in Houston scored higher than their peers in public schools nationwide. However, the overall average score for Houston's fourth-graders is lower than the average score for fourth-graders nationwide. How could this be? The answer is found by looking more closely at the specific groups within Houston's student population.

Although all racial/ethnic groups in Houston did achieve scale scores higher than the national average for their peers, the demographic makeup of the student body in Houston is quite different than the demographics observed for fourth-graders nationally. In Houston, Black and Hispanic students make up a larger portion of the student population at grade 4 than they do nationally (25 and 64 percent, respectively, compared to 16 and 22 percent nationally). While Black and Hispanic students have made significant gains over the years, their average group scores still remain lower than those of White and Asian/Pacific Islander students. Consequently, their increased representation within the Houston student population has the effect of lowering the average score for the district as a whole—even as each individual group within the population is improving. This is a phenomenon referred to as Simpson's Paradox.

NAEP uses the TUDA report to ensure that the specific educational patterns of urban districts, often significantly divergent from those patterns in other regions across the country, do not go overlooked, so folks know what students are truly able to do in Houston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Boston, and Miami-Dade, to name just a few of the 18 urban districts that participated in the 2009 assessment. Results are available for each of these districts, so let's get to your questions!