By A. Patrick Huff, Ph.D.
June 1, 2026
R
ahm Emanuel’s recent reel on Instagram where he stated that Republicans abandoned public education through vouchers while Democrats “walked away” from standards and accountability ignores the actual history of federal education policy over the last twenty-five years.The overarching theme of the video. by Mr. Emanuel is good and on point. Children’s chances for success in life are dependent in large measure by how each child can access support from their home, their school and from their place of worship. One claim made by Mr. Emanuel, however, needs further examination. In comparing the role of the two political parties in the demise of public education, the claim made that Democrats abandoned standards and accountability and that Republicans walked away from correcting the errors they have made in policy over the past thirty-four years, needs further examination. True, Republicans did walk away from public education after they were instrumental in breaking the profession, then offering education savings accounts or vouchers to give parents options for their children’s education. What parent would not want to apply for a voucher after subjecting their children to the mess that is now public education.
Democrats, however, did not abandon standards and accountability. Instead, they deepened and expanded both standards and accountability.
The modern accountability era began under Republicans with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001. NCLB created the federal testing and accountability framework that tied school ratings, sanctions, and interventions to standardized test performance. But when the law became politically toxic because so many schools were labeled as failures under the impossible Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) mandates, the Obama Administration did not dismantle the system.
Instead, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan offered states waivers from NCLB requirements — but only if states adopted new accountability systems approved by the federal government. One of the major conditions attached to those waivers was adoption of “college and career ready standards,” which in practice overwhelmingly meant Common Core.
So, the accountability regime was not abandoned. It was rebranded, decentralized, and intensified.
Then came the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, passed with bipartisan support and signed by President Obama. ESSA did not eliminate accountability. It shifted responsibility for designing accountability systems from Washington directly to the states. The testing requirements remained. The intervention models remained. School ratings remained. Data collection remained. The federal government simply required states to create their own accountability plans within federal guidelines. In Texas, the new policy for school accountability was HB 1842, passed in 2015. HB 1842 fulfilled a condition for approval of the Waiver.
In other words, Republicans created the federal accountability machine through NCLB, and Democrats preserved it by moving it into state-based systems under ESSA.
The truth is that both parties have been partners in the standards-and-accountability movement for decades. The disagreement has never really been about whether schools should be measured and controlled through testing and accountability systems. The disagreement has been over who controls the system — Washington, state governments through which political party is in power or increasingly private operators through school choice mechanisms.
This is to point out that, up to this point, the education agenda is a bipartisan effort passed from one party’s administration to the next. Someone must step-up and stop this insidious plan perpetrated on the teaching profession and America’s children. I say, let it be Texas. As Texas goes, so goes the nation.
Dr. Patrick Huff. is a retired educator of thirty-four years, with experience as a middle school and high school principal. His public education experience was obtained in Aldine ISD, Conroe ISD, and Klein ISD. After retiring from public education, Dr. Huff taught as an adjunct professor in the graduate school at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX.
He has a B.S. from Texas Christian University, an M.Ed. from Sam Houston State University, and a Ph.D. from Prairie View A&M University.
His awareness and insight into the domination of testing in today’s public schools and the unrealistic mandates of No Child Left Behind law, led him to write The Takeover of the Public School System in America: The Agenda to Control Information and Knowledge Through the Accountability System, 2015.
He currently lives with his wife, Connie, in Tomball, TX. and can be reached at:
