Matthew Yglesias on TUDA

Matthew Yglesias writes for the Atlantic. I believe he is dating Sara Mead, formerly of Ed Sector (lots of research on performance gaps), and is pretty well versed on urban education. Click through for the full post:

The Truth About Urban Schools

23 Jun 2008 11:41 am

Conversations about urbanism always eventually end up going in the direction of education policy. After all, absent better schools, the city will always be a place for poor people, very rich people, and young people rather than for the mainstream of American life. To that end, it's worth noting that a lot of people's ideas about the quality of urban schools are mistaken, as you can see from a look inside the results of the NAEP mathematics test as revealed in the Trial Urban District Assessment from 2005. First off, consider the number of eighth grader who rate as "below basic" (this is bad):