America is misreading its urban schools: op-ed

This is a guest opinion column.

If you listen to the prevailing narrative surrounding the latest Education Scorecard, it is easy to assume American public education is locked in a spiral of collapse. Phrases like “learning recession” and “crisis” dominate the conversation. However, the hard data tells a much more compelling, overlooked story: the very school systems often dismissed as failures are actually leading the way in post-pandemic recovery.

Urban Schools Defying the Odds

While urban public schools have long been used as cautionary tales, the reality is that many have outperformed the national average in recent years. This isn’t a sudden fluke; it is the result of consistent improvement that began long before COVID-19.

The numbers regarding math performance are particularly striking. Of the 60 major city school systems tracked by the Scorecard, 49 improved at a faster rate than the national average between 2022 and 2025. While 40 percent of districts nationwide lost ground, urban leaders including Atlanta, Baltimore City, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis-Shelby County, Miami-Dade County, Nashville, and Philadelphia were making significant strides.

Breaking the Stereotypes

These achievements are happening in complex, large-scale districts that serve the nation’s highest concentrations of low-income students, multilingual learners, and children with disabilities. The reflexive habit of labeling these districts as “broken” fails to account for the grit and progress demonstrated by these school systems.

Reading data presents a more nuanced picture, but even here, the urban narrative of failure falls short. Although progress is uneven, many districts—such as Baltimore City, Cincinnati, the District of Columbia, and Richmond—posted reading gains that exceeded the national average by at least half a grade level. These urban districts also avoided the sharper declines seen elsewhere in the country during the pandemic.

A Path Toward Recovery

While urban systems still face obstacles like chronic absenteeism and the need to return to pre-2019 academic levels, their recent performance proves they are rising to the challenge. These gains are intentional, built on two decades of raising expectations, improving instructional quality, and providing targeted intervention for students who need it most.

In places like Birmingham, superintendent Mark Sullivan and his team have utilized data-driven strategies and focused federal relief funding on literacy, math, and tutoring to close the gaps. Despite these results, many observers remain stuck in old stereotypes.

It is time to stop viewing urban schools as permanent exhibits of decline and start recognizing them as engines of hard-won progress. The real story isn't that these schools are failing—it is that they are recovering with a resilience the rest of the country is only beginning to see.

Michael Casserly is a Strategic Advisor and former Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools. He is also the author of The Enduring Promise of America’s Great City Schools.

Akisha Osei Sarfo is the Research Director of the Council of the Great City Schools.