Nation's Report Card Shows Dallas, Fort Worth Lagging Behind Big City Peers in Public Schools

Dallas and Fort Worth kids are lagging behind other big-city schools on the so-called Nation's Report Card. The 2017 results released Tuesday show that scores stayed largely flat across the U.S. on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. But Dallas' performance was among those that saw a statistically significant drop. The two North Texas districts were generally near the bottom of the pack in percent of kids who scored at proficient rates in math and reading in fourth and eighth grades among 27 other urban districts. NAEP tests math and reading in the fourth and eighth grade every two years. Dallas saw its overall scores decline across the board. But the only drop that testing experts deemed as "significantly lower" was in fourth-grade math, where DISD's average score fell four points from its 2015 results. Three other major urban districts -- Charlotte, N.C., Cleveland and Detroit -- had similar declines in fourth-grade math.   Continue reading...