In this deeply troubling May 10, 2025 article in the New York Times, the author describes how the federal government is making deep intrusions into local curriculum policies (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/us/education-politics-learning.html). These intrusions are not about rigor and high expectations, as a bipartisan consensus sought in the early 2000s, but rather about political viewpoints. Rather than critical thinking, which should be the hallmark of education, the advocates of federal education surveillance would have us return to sanitized history curricula. Think of a return to Columbus “discovering” America, saving Native Nation “savages” from their traditions, and understanding that enslaved people had it pretty good after all.
Although there is clear evidence that student achievement has declined, the federal agenda is less about achievement than about political agendas. Both President George W. Bush and President Obama sought to tie federal funding to improved teaching and learning. Many of those efforts have been reversed, and the dismantling of the US Department of Education will likely complete that disassociation of the federal government from student achievement and teacher quality goals. Parents and teachers on both ends of the political spectrum are rebelling against accountability and rigorous curriculum, and the appetite for private school vouchers has doubled.
While unions have led the charge to get rid of tests and school accountability, they will learn that one must be careful for what one hopes for, because one might get it. There are 1.5 million students who left school during COVID and have still not come back. This will inevitably lead to school closures, teacher lay-offs, and higher class sizes for remaining teachers.
There are some bright spots. A dozen states have banned smartphones in class, and many teachers are returning to reading real books, not just the screens that are ubiquitous in schools. Many administrator observation checklists explicitly ask, “Is the teacher using technology?” when a perfectly fine answer might be “No!” However, with teacher job security increasingly tenuous, the checklists, rather than good pedagogy, may prevail.
To be clear, I’m no fan of accountability based exclusively on test scores. Along with Rick and Becky DuFour, I have written extensively about how to get accountability right in a way that considers not only test scores but also effective teaching, leadership, and extracurricular activities. But without some consensus about what great teaching and learning look like, we will regress to the Lake Woebegone Effect, where “all the children are above average.”
I encourage you to listen to the Fearless Schools Podcast. You can follow the Fearless Schools Podcast wherever you listen.