School accountability is gone, fallen into a ditch, without so much as a shovel of dirt to give it a half-decent burial.
A generation ago, the Republicans, in their 2004 national platform, celebrated the passage of No Child Left Behind, a new federal law “based on four fundamental pillars,” one of which was “ensuring strong accountability for student achievement, for all children.” Republicans boasted: “Results are now measured on the basis of student achievement rather than simply dollars spent.”
Democrats were even more aggressive. They complained the law was not adequately funded. Further, they insisted, “we must create rigorous new incentives and tests for new teachers. We need new rewards for teachers who go the extra mile and excel in helping children learn. And . . . we must have fast, fair procedures for improving or removing teachers who do not perform on the job.”
Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama placed accountability for student achievement as measured by standardized tests near the center of their school-reform agenda.
Now, accountability is barely mentioned in the education plank of either party. The current version of the Democrats’ platform is only a draft, which must be approved by the delegates to the national convention. But it has the imprimatur of Jamie Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, who introduced it by saying it “highlights the progress that we’ve made since day one of the Biden-Harris Administration” and recommits the party to “finish the job.”
Most of the education plank makes commitments to people at stages in the life cycle other than five to 18, the years when children and young adults attend school. Democrats promise “free, universal preschool for four-year-olds”; they recommend job training partnerships that “connect high schools, local businesses and labor unions” for those leaving high school; the party pledges to offer Pell Grants for “seven million more students” and to “subsidize tuition at all Minority Serving Institutions for anyone whose family earns less than $125,000 a year”; and it commits to additional loan forgiveness for adults with unpaid tuition bills.
The one paragraph devoted exclusively to K-12 education is short, simple, and largely devoid of ideas for lifting student achievement at a time when students have suffered severe learning losses due to the pandemic. The platform does differentiate itself from the Republican one by repeating the party’s long-standing opposition to private-school vouchers. It later says teachers “deserve a raise,” though it makes no dollar commitments from any source, federal, state, or local. The platform favors recruitment of more new teachers, including efforts to “start training [some] in high school” and to give “school support staff” opportunities for advancement in their careers.
The platform applauds the Biden-Harris administration for undertaking the “biggest investment in public education in history, providing $130 billion to help 15,000 districts reopen, rebuild, and catch kids up; funding that has worked to help our children learn.” But it ignores research revealing the minimal effects on student achievement of the vast amount of the federal dollars that have been spent. Eighth grade students remain a year behind achievement levels reached by comparable students before pandemic fears closed schools. Nor does the platform address the looming “fiscal cliff” facing school districts after funds from the “biggest investment” have run out, an issue the next administration will need to address.
Notably, the document says nothing about accountability other than to promise “to increase accountability at charters, holding them to the same transparency standards as public schools.” The only hint of support for reform within the K–12 school system is applause for the federal government’s “increased investments in full-service community schools five-fold, providing health care, nutrition, job training, and other wraparound services for kids at school.” Even this program, funded at $150 million in the 2024 fiscal year, is not for reform within schools but for incorporating services provided by outside agencies.
With a change in the party’s nominee, emendations to this draft might be made—perhaps in committee, perhaps on the convention floor. But the document’s inattention to accountability at this point is noteworthy, as is its consistent focus on those who are either younger or older than children required by law to go to school.
Accountability has also disappeared from the Republican platform, which makes no reference to the concept. Neither does the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership (dubbed Project 2025), the detailed report that Democrats claim would serve as a secret playbook for a second Trump administration (a charge Trump vigorously denies). In Mandate, Heritage says that “federal intervention in education has failed to promote student achievement” and that “existing funding [should] . . . be sent to states as grants over which they have full control.” No federal oversight is projected.
In Massachusetts, “full control” could mean very little accountability if voters approve a union-backed initiative that calls for an end to the high school graduation exam, the keystone of the Bay State’s accountability reform back in 1998. If the Democratic and Republican platforms reflect broader sentiments in society, then a reform once credited for lifting Massachusetts to the Number 1 rank in student achievement may be undone come November.
Not long ago, accountability loomed as large as Mr. Kurtz, a fictional, self-confident European who bought and sold elephant and rhino tusks in what was known as the “dark” continent, as delineated in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. As the novella winds to its numbing conclusion, an African boy reports: “Mistah Kurtz—he dead.”
So it seems with accountability.
Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University. He welcomes your reactions to this post by email at paul.peterson@educationnext.org; responses will be curated and shared periodically. His Education Exchange podcast is available with a new episode each Monday.
