“The accountability rule constitutes an unfunded mandate and is an unprecedented move by the federal government to take state power,” McCarthy wrote. “Though the original law allows for states to decide how to assess schools, this rule dictates a Washington standard that undermines state and local control over education and further strains state and local budgets.”
The fight over the rule represented one of the rare times the GOP and teachers’ unions were on the same side of an education issue. The National Education Association objected to the use of student-test data to measure whether a teacher-preparation program is working well enough, and complained that the rule didn’t account for differences in school resources, technology, and other factors.