LITTLE ROCK – Arkansas’ public schools have narrowed the performance gap between black and white eighth-graders’ scores on national standardized tests of mathematics skills, according to a national report released Tuesday.

State education officials credited the progress made over nearly two decades to the state’s efforts to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and massive amounts of new state funding for schools that first came in 2004.

The mathematics gap narrowed in Arkansas between 1990 and 2007 because gains of black eighth-graders outpaced the gains of whites, the Education Department report said. However, the report also found that the state was still below the national average when it came to some aspects of the racial divide, including reading scores.

Arkansas was one of eight states that had a larger achievement gap than the national average when comparing scores of blacks and whites on reading tests given to fourth-graders, according to the report. The average reading score of black fourth-graders in Arkansas was 195 on a scale of 0-500, while for white fourth-graders it was 226. That 31-point gap exceeded the national average gap of 27 points – with the black average at 203 and the white average at 230.

Nationwide, reading and math scores rose for black students across the country, but not enough to close the gap between them and their white peers, the report found.

The report by the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences was based on test results from nationwide assessments in 1990, 2005 and 2007. Reading and math scores of both fourth-graders and eighth-graders were evaluated.

Julie Thompson, spokeswoman for the state Education Department, said agency officials were excited by what she viewed as the report’s confirmation that Arkansas is doing some things right.

“It reflects the same trend we have seen on our benchmark scores,” Thompson said. “Not only are we closing gaps in some cases, we’re doing it by raising the scores of all students.”

Thompson said Arkansas educators were working hard to close the performance gap between black and white students.

“No one wants these gaps to exist,” she said. “Our mantra around here is really high expectations for all children, looking past color or income level.”

According to Thompson, the improvements since 1990 reflect some changes made in Arkansas.

“We know that we’ve put in place ... some systemwide interventions, professional development, that have filtered down to the classroom,” she said.

Tom Simmons, a math teacher in the El Dorado School District for 11 years, said that district has focused on closing the black-white achievement gap by setting high standards for its teachers and giving them lots of support – both in technology and staffing.

“In all of our schools, we have math and literacy coaches – they’re there to rescue teachers,” Simmons said. “So if you have a teacher that’s struggling with teaching fractions, the coach can go into that classroom and present a special unit, and then they can get the teacher the training needed to handle the task better.”

And much more attention is paid to students who fall behind in the early years of their schooling. Those children are given special tutoring in their classrooms, he said, “to take these kids from below-basic and restore them to proficiency.”