Despite some progress since 1990, Black students continue to trail White students significantly in both math and reading at critical stages of K-12 education, a new federal report says.

Black students scored 26 to 31 points lower than their White counterparts in 2007 under the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often dubbed “the nation’s report card” because it is one of the few national barometers of achievement during the elementary and secondary years.

Back in 1990, the gap was slightly higher, ranging from 29 to 33 points, said the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). NAEP includes assessments of reading and math achievement at both the fourth- and eighth-grade levels.

In presenting the data at a conference Tuesday in Washington, D.C., NCES noted that both Blacks and Whites had achieved higher test scores in 2007 compared with the previous decade. Blacks were able to narrow the gap in fourth-grade math and reading but not in either subject at the eighth-grade level.

As a result, education experts noted that the findings, at best, signify only modest gains.

“In 2007, both groups scored the highest ever in reading and math. But the gaps between the races are still large,” said Hugh Price, former National Urban League president and a Princeton University scholar.

Price said his own analysis of the data highlighted other “alarming” trends. For example, more than half of Black fourth-graders were below basic in reading in 2007. More than one-third, or 36 percent, scored below basic in math.

“The bottom line is — despite encouraging signs of progress reflected in the most recent NCES reports, the pace of improvement is too sluggish,” Price said.

One noteworthy finding in the data is that Northeast and Midwest states sometimes fared worse than states of the South, where racial gaps have long been a focus of attention from scholars and the federal government.