New data from Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project confirms what close observers already knew: America’s test scores are slipping. The pandemic worsened the decline, but the slide began years before. In one-third of school districts, students are reading a full grade level lower than they were in 2015.
The new data is emboldening calls to restore something like the No Child Left Behind Act, the stringent, test-based accountability policy that defined American education from 2002 to 2015 and imposed penalties on schools whose students did not meet proficiency requirements on state standardized tests. The Atlantic captured that impulse in a 2025 podcast episode titled “Bring Back High-Stakes School Testing.” In it, Margaret Spellings, a secretary of education under President George W. Bush and now president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, argues we need to restore “the muscle of accountability, the muscle of assessment.” Rahm Emanuel, exploring a 2028 presidential run, said in April that Democrats have abandoned standards and accountability and must return to them...