This morning, we published a story highlighting a new analysis of 2009 NAEP results for urban districts in reading. At the big-picture level, 8th graders in large cities posted small gains in reading over the past two years, though urban 4th graders failed to show any improvement deemed statistically significant.
The story provides plenty more details about the results for urban districts overall, as well as for a batch of individual school systems. The strongest improvement over time is seen in Atlanta, which saw big gains at both the 4th and 8th grade levels since 2002. The increases, in fact, far outpaced the growth of the nation as a whole on NAEP since then, though Atlanta still trails the national averages in actual performance on the exams. (Urban 4th graders overall also saw larger gains since 2002 than the nation as a whole in reading.)
Of course, my story only touches the surface. To dig more deeply, check out for yourself the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment for reading 2009.
Also, you may be interested in this EdWeek story about the companion report for math, which was released in December.