September 12, 2008 4:24PM # The Fraudulence of Bureaucratic ‘Accountability’ By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) --- SHARE Most education policy analysts, most politicians in both parties, and both presidential candidates have expressed their support for bureaucratic “accountability” in education — the belief that government-imposed testing regimes can signficantly improve the quality of American education. They persist in this belief despite the fact that U.S. academic achievement has stagnated or declined *both [before](https://www.cato.org/2008/09/09/obama-touts-failed-federal-program/) and [after](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8850)* the passage of No Child Left Behind, the signature legislation of accountability gurus. Perhaps what is needed is a visceral example of WHY government-mandated testing has proven to be of such dubious worth. For example, this Charleston, SC school’s [meteoric test score gains over the past five years have all but vanished in a single year](http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/sep/10/school_under_scrutiny53611/) after the administration and grading of students’ tests were taken out of the hands of school officials. True accountability is not achieved when the quality of a child’s education is measured by a single set of government tests. [It is achieved when parents are free to choose from among a variety of competing, mininally regulated schools](http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9634). ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).