Many US education reform efforts have focused on the performance of students in large, urban school districts. Compared with their suburban and rural counterparts, urban school districts enroll larger proportions of students of color, and more of their students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch (Sable, Plotts, and Mitchell 2010). Moreover, the achievement gap is larger within large city districts than for public school districts nationally. For example, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2015, the average gap between black and white student scores was 20 percent larger in large city districts, and the gap between Hispanic students and white students was nearly 25 percent larger.
Recognizing the importance of understanding student achievement in large cities, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has conducted biennial assessments of fourth- and eighth-grade reading and mathematics, known as the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program, since 2002. The TUDA, which assessed 21 school districts in 2015, is an extension of the NAEP assessment program the “Nation’s Report Card,” which also provides national and state data on student achievement.