More than 100 black and Latino principals and superintendents, including Andre Hornsby of Prince George's, see the law differently. They say it could be as significant as Brown v. Board of Education in its potential to widen opportunities for black and Latino students. With a nudge from the Education Trust, a group that helped draft and push for the law, the superintendents of color have signed a letter supporting provisions in the law on accountability.

One day I took them into the hallway while the teacher gave the other kids a test. The devastated look on one child's face will never leave me. "I can't take the test?" she asked, quizzically. She was asking, "Am I so stupid -- so 'low' -- that I can't even take a test?" I worked with the kids for a half-hour, and even had some success preparing them to take that day's test (no one had ever pointed out to the Spanish speakers the similarity between the Spanish word for earth -- tierra -- and terrarium, one of the words being tested.) But a half-hour with a parent volunteer was not what they needed. They needed all the time they could get with an expert teacher. Unfortunately, their teacher unloaded them onto any warm body who walked into the classroom -- teacher aides, parent volunteers, whomever. I should say that she was not a bad teacher. She was, in fact, a pretty good teacher -- for her "high" kids. But, like thousands of her colleagues, she -- wittingly or not -- sorted her students, putting most of her energy into the kids she had deemed able to learn and writing off the "low" kids.

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