BURLINGTON — Ask a Burlington student or teacher or parent and they will quickly tell you, their little village school is the best school there is.

Their long-held opinion has now been seconded by a high-ranking authority on education: Uncle Sam.

Friday, Christine Cohn, with the U.S. Department of Education, visited the school to officially congratulate it as a national No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon School, one of only 18 in the state chosen for the honor, one of only 287 in the United States.

Cohn told a school assembly there are four factors that contribute to a school’s success: a community that values education, school leadership dedicated to excellence, teachers who can inspire students to achieve and, “the best boys and girls who come to school every single day to learn the most they can,” she said.

Her comments drew applause from those same students.

She told the students that with this accolade from Washington, D.C., people across the country will be looking at Burlington Elementary.

“It doesn’t matter where you are in the country or what your zip code is,” she said. “Success can be achieved through hard work.”

The No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon Schools Program honors public and private schools that are either academically superior in their states or that demonstrate dramatic gains in student achievement, according to information from the Department of Education.

The program requires schools to meet one of two criteria. It recognizes schools that either have at least 40 percent of their students from disadvantaged backgrounds but have dramatically improve student performance or that score in the top 10 percent on state assessments.