New York City’s 4^th- and 8^th-graders have not improved as much in math or reading as their peers in other cities, results from new national tests show. While city students score relatively high, improvement has been markedly slow since 2003 compared with other large urban school districts.

The Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), which breaks out big city results on the national NAEP exams, were released on Dec. 18. Though the Department of Education touted the city’s scale scores, results clearly showed that progress in city schools under Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stalled, especially in the last four years. Meanwhile, districts such as Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles continued to make gains.

“Mayor Bloomberg has decided that his educational legacy is nothing but a triumph despite what the facts say,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said of the results. Mulgrew told reporters that city students “would have been better served by a different mayor — one who actually understood education and understood that supporting schools, teachers and having a real curriculum would have been a lot better than having an ideological market agenda.”

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New York City 4^th-graders have gained 9 points in math since 2003, while the TUDA large-city average increased by 11 points. In 8^th-grade math, New York City increased 8 points while large cities rose a much larger 14 points. Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. — nearly all of which have higher percentages of poor students — improved at double or almost triple the New York City rate.

In reading, there was a similar pattern. Fourth graders made good gains from 2003 to 2009, but they city has posted flat results since then while other cities extended their gains. New York City 8^th-graders, who performed above the large-city average in 2003, are now below the average.

In addition, achievement gaps between black and Hispanic students and their white counterparts did not narrow at all between 2003 and 2013, the results show.

NAEP — the National Assessment of Education Progress — is given every two years to samples of 4^th- and 8^th-grade students throughout the country. It is often referred to as the “gold standard” test because it does not vary as state tests tend to do. TUDA has reported city scores since 2003, and with this year’s results TUDA completely frames the Bloomberg education reform period.