This op-ed by Secretary Margaret Spellings appeared in the Hartford Courant on March 20, 2005.

To some students, "test" is a four-letter word. Given the choice, I'm sure many would welcome the chance to be tested only every other year. But the adults in charge of their education surely know better.

Or do they?

Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty Sternberg has asked the U.S. Department of Education to exempt half of the state's students from annual testing under the No Child Left Behind Act. She said, "Adding tests in grades 3, 5 and 7 ... will tell us nothing that we do not already know about our students' achievement."

I disagree. For one thing, it will tell you how well your third-, fifth- and seventh-graders are doing. Teachers cannot remedy weaknesses they don't see. The whole point of assessing students regularly is to catch problems early so they can be fixed before it's too late. Every year builds on what was learned before. Therefore, we cannot exempt a single class or grade level.

The No Child Left Behind Act is an expression of President Bush's belief that every child can learn and must be taught. It was passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress, tired of seeing graduates receive diplomas they could not read.

The law measures students annually in grades 3-8, and once more before graduation. It holds schools accountable for bringing them up to grade level in reading and math. The tests are not dictated by Washington, but are designed and developed by the states themselves.

Connecticut has received more than $23 million to develop its assessments. Commissioner Sternberg claims the assessments for grades 3, 5 and 7 would cost Connecticut another $41 million. This estimate is off the mark. It includes costs either unrelated to testing, such as "curriculum adjustment" and school choice, or met by the federal government already, such as professional development. The testing mechanisms are in place - they simply need to be applied to the rest of Connecticut's schoolchildren.

Assessment is one of the linchpins of No Child Left Behind. Another is disaggregation of data - separating scores by different student groups. For decades, an achievement gap was allowed to grow in our nation's schools, with wealthier and white students on one track and disadvantaged, disabled and minority students increasingly on another.

Former Clinton administration official and state Education Commissioner Gerald Tirozzi, who now leads the National Association of Secondary School Principals, called it "two Connecticuts: separate and unequal." Students were misdiagnosed, victimized by low expectations and hidden behind district-wide averages - out of sight and left behind.

President Bush saw this for what it was: unacceptable. Today, nearly every state has reported improved academic performance, with minority students and urban schools posting some of the greatest gains. Thanks in part to No Child Left Behind, the pernicious achievement gap is finally beginning to close.

In Connecticut, however, the news is not as good. African American fourth-graders scored 37 points lower than white students in reading and 32 points lower in math, according to the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The 2003-04 Connecticut Mastery Test found that 88 percent of white eighth-graders were proficient or advanced in those subjects; the range for Hispanic and African American eighth-graders was 48 to 53 percent. We must stay the course and apply the law to these young learners.

The president's next priority is bringing accountability and high standards to our high schools. His proposed $1.5 billion high school initiative is urgently needed at a time when only 68 out of 100 incoming ninth-graders receive their diploma on time, and just 18 graduate from college.

For now, the test is before us. Will Connecticut pass it by uniformly applying No Child Left Behind? Its students and parents eagerly await the answer.

Margaret Spellings is U.S. secretary of education.