With all of the criticism that’s surrounded the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, we forget the basic premise that most Americans agree with –  all students deserve a chance to learn and accountability from our schools.

We’ve criticized NCLB in the past for its unobtainable mandates, but we agree in principle that if school improvements are aimed at only a few, then they should be considered failures. Obviously, all students will not achieve the same level of success, but they all deserve the opportunity to do so.

Some parents and school officials in Carpentersville-based School District 300 are concerned about a gap they’ve seen in standardized testing results between white and minority students. There are individual white students who don’t achieve and minority students who achieve at high levels, but the general data make it clear that there is a gap in test scores.