Let’s read some numbers — as a last farewell to a mayor who found numerical data so much more interesting and expressive than real children in classrooms.

These are the numbers from New York City’s decade of test performance on the Trial Urban District Assessments. They suggest that the mayor’s fixation on numbers, without an accompanying emphasis on curriculum, mentoring and support, may have limited the city’s ability to improve over the last 10 years.

These assessments zero in (couldn’t resist that!) on New York City’s performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress — the “gold standard” national exam — compared to other large U.S. cities. NAEP exams test what we ought to be testing: They ask students to reason, to problem solve and to demonstrate knowledge. They are comparable year to year and across geographical areas.

New York City’s newly released NAEP results, though, may not please the former mayor. They show that between 2003 and 2013 the city’s 4th- and 8th-graders did not improve as much in math or reading as their peers in other cities. New York City students score relatively high and they have unquestionably made progress. They just haven’t made as much progress on average as students in other large urban school districts.

A flattening trend for NYC

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This is especially true over the past four years. New York City’s gains stalled out beginning in 2009. In 4th-grade math and reading, city students have actually lost ground since 2009, while in 8th-grade math they have gained only one point on a 500-point scale.

Eighth-grade reading is a bit different: Students showed no improvement from 2003 to 2009 and have made some gains since then. Still, large cities have had better average gains than New York since 2009.

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Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Diego gained two to three times as many scale points as New York City between 2003 and 2013 (again, with 8th-grade reading moving a bit differently). The comprehensive “large city average,” which includes all cities with populations of 250,000 or more, also climbed faster. New York City used to beat those averages, but that’s not the case anymore.

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One result that should be of particular concern for the former mayor given his often-stated objectives: New York did not significantly narrow the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white counterparts between 2003 and 2013 in 4th or 8th grade, in either reading or math.

Poverty is a major factor

On the bright side, big-city students have made more progress than the nation as a whole in both subjects and grades, narrowing a gap with the suburbs and the rest of the country that was once considered all but immutable.

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ll, comparisons of scores, as opposed to growth, show performance closely matches poverty. The highest-poverty districts, judged by their percentage of 4th-graders eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, are also the lowest performers. If we rank urban school districts by average 4th-grade math scores, there is a near-perfect inverse match between scores and poverty levels.

Cleveland, with 100 percent poverty, is the lowest performer (a scale score of 216). New York (77 percent poverty) and Boston (80 percent poverty), both relatively wealthier cities, score quite high (236 and 237). San Diego, the least poor, scores as high as the national average (241). (Los Angeles, with very high numbers of English language learners and 80 percent poverty, is an exception, performing below what its student population would indicate, at 228.)

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However, the improvement rates for the school districts do not correspond much with poverty levels. Atlanta and Chicago, two relatively poor cities, have gained 17 and 16 points respectively in 4th-grade math since 2003; Los Angeles has gained 13; and New York City, only 9.

In 8th-grade math (not graphed), the differing rates of improvement are even more stark. Of the 10 major cities that have participated in the Trial Urban District Assessments since the beginning, New York shows the second-lowest gain (8 points) after Cleveland. By contrast, Atlanta gained 23 points, Boston 21, Los Angeles 19 and Chicago 14.

Where numbers fail

Numbers describe precisely, but they don’t tell us why things happen. The NAEP scores cannot evaluate curricula or programs. Individual student scores are not even reported. Still, it is tempting to hypothesize: 10 years of relentlessly measuring the city by low-quality state tests has limited New York City students’ potential to improve. It is there in the numbers.

But numbers are especially clumsy at capturing the infinite variations exhibited by living, breathing learners. The good news is that there is a huge range around the citywide averages. No individual student is ever a statistic, and his or her ability to learn and grow is unknown.