Sixty years ago, my grandparents sat in a cramped Bombay apartment and sparked in my father a belief that a good education would transport him and his family out of poverty and into a comfortable, stable existence in America.

My parents immigrated to the Midwest, and I attended public schools in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota in what is considered the "pre-No Child Left Behind era." I was the only Indian student in all-white schools with all-white teachers.

Assimilation was the name of the game because it was my only option. I was not asked, and did not tell, my family's immigration story. And while I sat for annual exams, my performance as a person of color was not a factor in school accountability. The system concealed the differences that I experienced as a child of immigrant parents.

The No Child Left Behind Act worked to eliminate this silence by requiring schools to report annual test scores by student group. This new focus prevented schools from sweeping certain student scores under the rug and spurred innovations that have helped more students of all backgrounds learn, graduate from high school and aim for college degrees.

In the coming weeks, the U.S. Senate is likely to consider reauthorizing the law, now dubbed the Every Child Achieves Act. As executive director of Teach For America-Twin Cities, I am well aware of the testing backlash and the temptation for test prep to infringe on teaching. But as a first-generation Asian-American who struggled to have his voice heard, I urge lawmakers to add depth to the student stories through data. Any reauthorization should require three components: annual statewide assessments, scores reported by student group and meaningful accountability guardrails so that all students access quality education opportunities.

As written, the Every Child Achieves Act rightly preserves the annual reading and math tests for third- through eighth-graders and one reading and math test in high school. It still allows scores to be tallied so parents and teachers can compare schools and categories of students and focus interventions on those who need it most.

The biggest change is in the approach to accountability. Now, when too many students fall short of federal goals for too many years, the federal government can step in and restructure a school with new teachers or leaders, or even shut it down. The reauthorization is on track to allow states to set their own achievement goals and the repercussions for missing them. This empowers parents and teachers to weigh in on decisionmaking at every level, a move in the right direction.

But it also risks going backward to the days of no federal oversight, when states had low or no standards for meeting the needs of their most diverse and vulnerable students. The Lake Wobegon effect could ripple beyond "A Prairie Home Companion," and all students could be above average.

To strike a balance, lawmakers should give states room to create systems that meet their needs but erect guardrails. Specifically, states should be required to identify and intervene in at least the bottom 5 percent of schools. The rankings should be based in part on annual statewide test data and graduation rates, including the rates of historically underserved students. And the interventions should focus on improving achievement using evidence-based qualitative and quantitative measures, including investment in teachers.

That includes investing in teachers like the one whose classroom I recently visited in a Minneapolis public school who led a classroom of English-language learners. In my youth, I was silent on my parents' immigration story and the system ignored the impact that story had on my learning. But today, in this teacher's ELL classroom, the students' class work includes telling their immigration stories.

Let's resist efforts to turn back the clock and move forward with a strong and flexible national education law that includes high-quality assessments, disaggregated subgroup scores and federal safety nets for the lowest performing schools and students. This is not an attempt to stifle teachers, but a way to use data to help understand our students' stories and to write a stronger next chapter in their incredible lives.

Anil Hurkadli is executive director of Teach For America-Twin Cities and a leadership fellow at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.