This op-ed by Secretary's Regional Representative Kristine Cohn appeared in the Daily Southtown (Chicago, IL) on September 12, 2006.

Every child can learn and must be taught. That is the reason and purpose for the No Child Left Behind Act, which is keeping America's long-held promise to its children.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provided the first federal aid to high-poverty school districts. The law lacked a core ingredient, however: accountability. A year after the ESEA became law, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy asked, "What happened to the children? Do you mean you spent a billion dollars and you don't know whether they can read or not?"

Thirty-five years and $130 billion later, little had changed. Reading and math test scores remained stagnant and the achievement gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" had grown wider. Children were often shuffled through the system without achieving fundamental reading and math skills.

The No Child Left Behind law was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress and signed by President Bush nearly five years ago. For the first time, it held states accountable for measuring and improving student performance with the goals of closing the achievement gap and enabling every student to read and do math at grade level by 2014. To achieve this, NCLB called on states to annually assess students and disaggregate achievement data by subgroups to ensure that all groups were learning and no child fell through the cracks.

An Aug. 22 Daily Southtown editorial claimed that NCLB "too often sets unfair standards" for student achievement. NCLB does not set standards at all. States themselves set the benchmarks for success.

Over time, as we have seen what works, states have been allowed to make adjustments. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education approved six revisions to Illinois' accountability plan in 2006 alone.

The editorial also advocated a "more practical approach" to accountability, such as a plan that judges students on their progress made over time. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings agrees that such an approach may have merit, as long as states are following the "bright-line principles" of NCLB. In May, she approved the first pilot programs for these "growth-based" accountability models. While Illinois is not in the pilot program this year, state schools Supt. Dunn has indicated that the state is developing a proposal for next year, and it will be considered by the department.

Schools in need of improvement, whether in one category or all, receive extra resources to improve. Since NCLB's passage, more than $4 billion in federal funds has gone to Illinois schools, helping to fund an array of tools including tutoring, after-school programs and professional teacher development.

If a school has not met Illinois' standards for several years in a row, its teachers and parents may work together to place it under new management or to turn it into a charter school. In other words, we are searching for ways to help schools and their students succeed.

The data show the law is working. The most long-term National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), released in July 2005, showed elementary school student achievement in reading and math at all-time highs and the achievement gap closing. Nationwide, more progress was made by 9-year-olds in reading in the past five years than in the previous 28 years combined.

It's also working in Chicago Public Schools. Testifying before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Education Reform in Chicago last month, CPS CEO Arne Duncan said four more students on average per classroom met state standards this year than last. In reading, 60 percent of students are meeting standards, compared to 39 percent in 2001. In math, 65 percent are meeting standards, up 30 percent in five years. "CPS and NCLB clearly share the same goals," Duncan said. Added Darlene Ruscitti, regional superintendent for DuPage County Schools, "To a certain degree, (NCLB) has empowered and challenged us. As educators, we are rising to the occasion."

Secretary Spellings likes to say that "what gets measured, gets done." Like a report card, the No Child Left Behind Act is encouraging schools to take concrete steps to help its students get back on track academically. This is neither unfair nor arbitrary—especially compared to the system that preceded it.

Kristine Cohn is U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' principal representative for Region V, which encompasses Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.