This report addresses widespread beliefs about the performance of urban students, and their family and school environments. Using data from several national surveys, it compares urban students and schools with their suburban and rural counterparts on a broad range of factors, including student population and background characteristics, afterschool activities, school experiences, and student outcomes, focusing specifically on the effects of poverty. The methodology used to explore differences among schools incorporates a control for the concentration of poverty in the school. Even after controlling for poverty, urban students compared less favorably to their nonurban counterparts on many measures. Urban high poverty schools and students performed similarly or more favorably than other high poverty schools on half of the measures studied, and high poverty concentration seemed to present equally challenging circumstances in all locations. On the other half of the measures, urban schools compared unfavorably, but, when considering the large overall variations by location and poverty concentration, urban high poverty schools and their students were generally no different than the effects of location and poverty concentration would have predicted. Five appendixes provide estimates and standard error tables, discussions of methodology and data sources, and a bibliography. (Contains 11 figures in the Executive Summary, 127 figures in the text, 3 charts, and 52 appendix tables. (SLD)