This op-ed by Secretary Margaret Spellings appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on October 14, 2005.

Testing has been a valuable part of the educational process since the days of Socrates. There is nothing new or scary about it. It lets teachers and parents know how kids are doing and lets students see the rewards of hard work.

That's why assessments are part of the No Child Left Behind Act. The law's emphasis on high standards and accountability has led to a sharp focus on results.

Students are no longer overlooked and shuffled from grade to grade, whether they have learned the material or not. The achievement gap between rich and poor and black and white is no longer treated as a sad fact of life, but rather as a problem to be solved. As President Bush likes to say, what gets measured gets done.

Regrettably, not everyone agrees. The group FairTest denounces achievement testing, including the assessment widely considered the gold standard, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card. FairTest claims on its Web site that "standardized tests are of little use for serious academic improvement efforts."

Don't tell that to students and teachers in Georgia or Maryland, where the results this year were called "stunning," "incredible" and "amazing" by educators. In fact, nearly every state in the nation has reported academic improvement since NCLB was passed.

Since its inception in 1969, NAEP has performed a valuable service by warning Americans of the unacceptably large score gaps between students of different racial and ethnic groups.

In its latest incarnation, the Nation's Report Card measures more than 600,000 students in grades four and eight in reading and math every two years. NAEP's rigorous methodology and impartial findings have earned the group respect and praise from all sides of the political and educational debates. The New York Times said it is "considered the best measure of the nation's long-term education trends."

This year's long-term trend results were the best in the report card's history. America's 9-year-olds scored an all-time high in mathematics and reading, as did 13-year-olds in math. More than half of the reading progress by younger children in the past 30 years was made in the past five.

Reading scores for African-American 9-year-olds jumped an astounding 14 points between 1999 and 2004. Math scores for Hispanic 9-year-olds rose 17 points in the same period. Math scores for Hispanic and African-American 13-year-olds climbed six and 11 points, respectively.

President Bush and I now want to apply these successful reforms to our high schools. The data show high school students lagging behind. Unfortunately, groups such as FairTest want education reform stopped dead in its tracks.

Next week, the main NAEP and state-by-state results will be released. The No Child Left Behind Act calls on all states to participate. Because states determine their own academic standards under the law, it makes sense for educators and policy-makers to compare states' performance so they can share and adopt best practices.

Of course, there are other elements to a quality education. NAEP has measured a few of those as well. According to NAEP, more young children are reading 20 or more pages a day. NAEP has found that students who watched three hours of television or less per day scored higher on reading tests than those who watched more. Students who regularly discussed their studies with their parents also scored higher.

In his book Achievement Matters, Hugh Price, former president of the National Urban League, tells parents to "make certain your children can pass—and better yet, excel on—those exams given by states and school districts to determine whether students have the academic knowledge and skills to advance from grade to grade and eventually graduate from high school."

That's good advice. Our duty as a nation mirrors our duty as parents: to help our children learn and succeed and to identify what works. NAEP and No Child Left Behind are helping us fulfill that duty.

Margaret Spellings is U.S. Secretary of Education