Urban schools face a host of challenges, and those challenges need to be faced by cities. Cities have high concentrations of disadvantaged and historically low-performing students. Segregation is a common and stubborn problem for cities that — when coupled with the predominant system of residency-based schools admissions — further concentrates disadvantaged students in particular schools. Large urban school districts face the yeoman’s work of creating opportunities for the majority of cities’ students, particularly for the disadvantaged.
However, in many cities, schools are run by a patchwork of providers including multiple traditional school districts, public charter schools, and private schools, and the leaders of such cities should measure their schooling challenges and address them from a city-wide perspective.
That city-centric logic is what lies behind the report, “Measuring Up: Educational Improvement and Opportunity in 50 Cities,” released today by the Center on Reinventing Public Education. This fascinating report is the product of a deep data dive to provide a city-wide look at schools in 50 mid- and large-sized cities across the country. The report’s authors purposefully chose cities where schools are managed by multiple agencies and sectors, so they could provide city leaders and the public with a clear look at their city’s schools, be they traditional public, charter, or private.
The report breaks new ground by providing comparable data on 50 other cities to give readers context and provide city leaders with examples of the challenges and successes that other cities are facing. City specific reports are available as well.
The authors were limited to publicly available data sources, but they squeezed them for all they were worth. They measured how well city’s schools were doing on the whole by using test scores, graduation rates, the share of city schools that were ‘beating the odds” compared to other schools in their state, and the share of schools in the city that fell in the state’s bottom 5% (and how long they stayed there). They also specifically looked at how city’s schools were doing for poor and minority students by examining student poverty and race enrollments in the lowest and highest scoring schools, gaps in student proficiency, advanced math course-taking, ACT/SAT test-taking, and out-of school suspensions.
So what does the report show? Well, the results are not pretty and the challenges of city schools are evident throughout the report.
Less than one in three cities made gains on reading and math compared to their state over three years, and eight lost ground. Graduation rates averaged an unacceptable 75%; well above 5% of schools in most cities were in the bottom 5% of their state, and 40% of those schools in the bottom stayed there for three years. For poor, Hispanic, and especially black students, outcomes were particularly bleak in terms of test scores, enrollment in high performing schools, advanced course-taking and suspensions.
Fortunately, there are bright spots in the report. Washington, D.C. enrolled more poor students in high-performing schools than non-poor students. Five cities showed zero schools remained in the bottom 5% of the state for three years, suggesting they are either closing or improving very low-performing schools. More than one in three students in Newark attended a school that was “beating the odds,” as compared to other schools in the state.
Fixing schools is at the top of most cities’ priority lists. This report doesn’t provide neat solutions, but it does show how city schools measure up on a number of metrics. It also shows which cities are making progress and growing opportunities, despite the challenges. By bringing to light comparative diagnoses of problems and evidence that progress is possible, CPRE has provided city leaders with a tool, and a dose of hope, in that effort.
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