In one of the first large-scale analyses of urban trends on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Council of the Great City Schools and the American Institutes for Research identified urban school systems that demonstrated high achievement or significant achievement gains on the NAEP, and examined possible factors behind these gains. The overarching goal was to identify variables that might be contributing to improvement in urban education nationwide, and to explore what is needed to accelerate these gains. The results demonstrated that improvement was less related to how well state and local standards aligned with NAEP frameworks, and more so to the instructional and organizational practices in the participating districts. These findings suggest broad implications for urban education reform, as well as the importance of strong instructional programming, leadership, and support for implementation of the new Common Core State Standards. (Contains 7 notes.) [For similar report, "Pieces of the Puzzle: Factors in the Improvement of Urban School Districts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress," see ED528220.]