In no normal enterprise would leadership eviscerate policies, even flawed policies, if the policies effectively promoted the goals of the enterprise. But, of course, American public education is no normal enterprise.

Consequential accountability emerged as a major policy direction in education in the nation in the mid-1990s. Through the force of the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001, accountability was extended to all the states in the early 2000s and deepened in its impact. This deepening was achieved principally by measuring student achievement each year (which made determinations of growth possible), insisting upon progress of key subgroups of disadvantaged students, and requiring consequences where adequate progress was not made.

Despite imperfections in the implementation of the policies and increasing resistance by forces of the status quo, some of the greatest gains ever on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were recorded during the peak of the consequential accountability movement. Whether one looks at the Long Term Trend data from 1999 to 2008 or the Main NAEP data from 2000 to 2009, the trajectories are impressively up for all subgroups in all subjects for students whose education was most affected by these policies.

Yet for a variety of mostly political reasons, policymakers began to wander off in unfortunate directions at the beginning of this decade. Declaring that No Child was “broken,” the current Administration made fateful decisions that weakened accountability instead of fixing the law’s problems. Unable to lead the Congress to a reauthorization of federal education law, the Obama Administration chose to waive the provisions of the law that were in need of repair as well as certain provisions it didn’t like.

Now here’s where the fatal move was made. Instead of demanding better, stronger, more effective and workable accountability from the states in return for relief from requirements that needed to be waived, the Obama Administration simply weakened accountability and instead demanded action on favored input factors, especially the adoption of certain content standards and teacher evaluation practices.

This was disastrous in several respects. First, it was disrespectful of Congress. The Congress had legislated on accountability for student results. It had not legislated in favor of one type of content standards versus another; nor had it called for teacher evaluation systems. Second, it further fanned the flames of hostility from various powerful interests who opposed the actions the Administration was taking unilaterally. And most importantly, it weakened accountability by limiting its application in a large number of schools, its coverage of all subgroups, and the range of consequences available.

Thus, instead of repairing and strengthening accountability, those in charge weakened accountability. And, in its place, they pushed favored input policies that have been weakly implemented, while further arousing ire and opposition to reform.

To what effect? NAEP scores have been largely flat on the Main NAEP since 2009. And the states that participated in the much vaunted, expensive Race to the Top program have neither raced to the top or anywhere near; nor have they generally made any progress at all since 2009.

In the midst of a breaking down of the law, an executive “doing its own thing,” and increasing dissatisfaction in the public, one might wonder where the Congress has been all this time. Reauthorization is now eight years overdue. Until very recently, there were occasional moans but no action. Now, suddenly, there appears to be coalescence around new legislation dubbed the Every Student Achieves Act.

What collection of policies merits this name? Essentially, the legislation keeps just a very few features of No Child (annual testing and meager pieces of accountability), purports to consolidate a few programs, adds a few new programs, keeps to current funding, adds no real choice, and reduces federal pressure on accountability, virtually to the very low level of that of the late 1980s.

Are key groups happy with this old approach that masks as a new approach? Certainly, conservatives aren’t. We’ll have the same level of borrowing and spending at the federal level. We’ll have no more parental choice. And yet we will get new programs.

Reformers aren’t happy either. The force that advanced civil rights is being seriously eroded. The law’s accountability features which helped lift student achievement and close achievement gaps are being virtually totally eviscerated.

Well – who then are happy with the legislation? The unions and other traditionalists, who despise the pressure of accountability, like the legislation. The states and local districts that want the money but would prefer to have it free of strings like it. And faux federalists, those who seem okay with borrowing and spending billions of federal dollars and keeping a massive federal machine in place to give states all this money basically free of criteria or requirements to get results for the money, support it.

The question arises: how in the world could anyone think this legislation could lead to every child achieving? At least No Child worked in the direction of its goal, and, while many children are still behind, distinctly fewer are today than when it was passed.

What reasoning could support the notion that what is essentially a return to policies that were in place when the NAEP scores were considerably lower than they are today would drive to every child achieving, even indeed to more children achieving than are today? I trust, as certain state chiefs have pledged, some states will keep up the work of reform. But where’s the evidence now of any abundant commitment to improvement that registers in distinctly better results? Other than in a handful of states and districts, one sees no forward motion on the NAEP anywhere.

While we are considering the matter of deception in words, let’s look at what may very well be the worst single feature of the new legislation.

The accountability that data and research have shown contributes to improved student achievement has been grounded predominantly in the expectation of improved student outcomes. We have had standards of learning, measures of progress in learning, and consequences for success or failure in improving learning outcomes. In virtually all systems of accountability at all levels, during the entire period of the accountability movement, accountability has been measured on the basis entirely, or virtually entirely, of outcomes.

If the measures of outcomes show deficiencies, the theory of action has been that inputs ought to be adjusted to get better results. In response to bad results, decision makers could deploy more effective strategies, better or more personnel, improved climate, better engagement of key players, or other inputs to effect improvement.

So, what does the new legislation permit? Up to 49 percent of the accountability criteria can be based by the states on any one or a combination of input factors, including school climate. This means (somebody’s judgment of) school climate could count more than, say, black students’ progress in math or Hispanic students’ proficiency in reading. Indeed if any input can drive 49 percent of an accountability rating, particularly if it gets an “A”, the input could totally dominate and determine ratings, even if real outputs get low to mixed marks.

This essay is intended to be a serious critique of recent moves to weaken accountability. Yet, as to calling it accountability when “the 49 percent input loophole” is permitted, I can think of no better technical term to use than to say this is disgusting.

Beginning in 2010 and accelerating through this legislation, we are witnessing a terrible retreat in the nation’s accountability for educating all its children, especially its disadvantaged children. We began to see signs of stagnancy in recent years, and we see them vividly today. I foresee continued stagnation well into the future, if not actual declines. This is nothing short of tragic. Our children require, and urgently so, that we continue, indeed speed up, the gains we made in the 2000s. Now, with this action, regardless of the misnomer people give it, we will languish in the years ahead.

The future will judge this turn harshly. But, worse, the children who fail to make needed further gains will be hurt by what’s being done, and the nation, as a whole, will suffer.

Certainly the proposed reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act coming out of a Congressional conference committee this week isn’t a done deal. The divide among Congressional Republicans in control of Congress on nearly every policy front — along with the divide between Republicans and the Obama Administration — still lowers the chances of reauthorization. Hardcore movement conservatives within Congressional Republican ranks are already expressing dismay about how the reauthorized bill increases federal subsidies even though research (including a study released last week by the Brookings Institution) have shown that Title I and other programs have not improved student achievement. The Heritage Foundation and its political action fund, which have already criticized the deal because it “fails to restore federalism in education”, will likely make a push on House Republicans to stymie its passage.

Meanwhile the Obama Administration, whose legacy on education policy would be all but eviscerated under the proposed No Child reauthorization, could still exercise plenty of effort to render its passage null and void. Even with the administration’s partial-reverse last month on support for standardized testing, it still has no interest in any proposal that would limit executive authority (both its own and that of future administrations) on education policymaking. Even with proposed law incorporating certain elements of the Obama Administration’s own effort to eviscerate No Child’s accountability provision through its waiver gambit, the overall bill likely still goes too far for Barack Obama’s own liking.

But there is a chance that this reauthorization will make it out of Congress and become law. Even if it doesn’t, twp things are certainly clear: That the strong federal accountability measures that have helped spur reforms that have helped more children succeed will be tossed into the ash bin. And that children, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds, will be the ones who will lose.

It would be an understatement to call the name of the proposed reauthorization, the Every Student Succeeds Act, a mockery of efforts to help all children succeed. By limiting the use of test data, graduation rates, and other objective measures of student achievement to a mere 51 percent of school and district ratings under statewide accountability systems, the bill essentially declares that improving student achievement, the most-important thing schools must do to help children build brighter futures, doesn’t matter. If the legislation is passed, states, districts, and schools won’t have to focus on providing children with the high-quality teaching and curricula they need to be literate and numerate enough to succeed in higher education and life.

Even worse, the reauthorization allows states to measure districts and schools on such amorphous categories as improving school climate and family engagement (and requiring that those categories account for 49 percent of ratings). This wouldn’t be so bad if states were required under the proposal to use objective measures of school climate such as out-of-school suspension rates (which can provide some insight on how school are serving), and were required to develop uniform chronic truancy rates that fully expose how districts are hiding the numbers of kids poorly-served by teaching, curricula, and cultures. But the legislation doesn’t require such data. So it is likely that states will include subjective surveys of school leaders and teachers. This will result in the proposed reauthorization sending the loud and clear message that learning doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile the proposed reauthorization embraces one of the worst aspects of the Obama Administration’s No Child waiver gambit: Limiting accountability and interventions to just the lowest-performing five percent of schools and those with wide achievement gaps. As Ann Hyslop, now of Bellwether Education Partners, demonstrated two years ago in a study for New America Foundation, that aspect of the waiver gambit allowed for 73 percent of 6,058 failure mills in 16 states identified under No Child in 2011-2012 to escape scrutiny. Altogether, 4,458 schools were allowed to provide shoddy curricula and instruction to 2.4 million children; this included 578 failure mills serving 319,000 children that would have been forced to overhaul their operations after six years of failure. Because the five percent limit would now apply to every state (and not just to those currently under the waiver gambit), the futures of millions more children will be ignored.

Further complicating matters is that the reauthorization would weaken the transparency that is critical to any form of real accountability. By allowing traditional districts (with permission from states) to replace state testing regimes with exams such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the legislation will make it even more difficult to determine how well school operators and the adults who work within them are serving all children. This also makes a mockery of implementing Common Core’s reading and math standards, which are geared to ensuring that all children receive comprehensive college-preparatory curricula that they will need for lifelong success.

All in all, the proposed reauthorization is a weakening of the strong accountability has that has helped more children gain brighter futures. As Thomas Ahn of the University of Kentucky and Duke University’s Jacob Vigdor determined in a study of North Carolina schools released last year, No Child’s accountability measures have helped the Tar Heel State improve achievement and even helped families in failing schools move into better-performing ones. On average, a North Carolina school failing AYP for the first time improved its math performance by five percent of a standard deviation. A poor-performing Tar Heel State school under Needs Improvement for a fifth consecutive year (and forced to develop a restructuring plan) improved reading performance by six percent of a standard deviation, while math achievement improved by nearly three percent of a standard deviation.

The improvements seen in North Carolina extend to the rest of the nation. As data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows, No Child’s accountability provisions (along with other reforms) have led to declines in illiteracy and innumeracy among poor and minority kids. This includes a 12 percentage point decline in the number of black fourth-graders reading Below Basic between 2002 and 2015, as well as a five percentage point decline in the number of black fourth-graders reading at Proficient and Advanced levels. With a five percentage point increase in the number of all children reading at Proficient and Advanced levels within that period — as well as increases in the percentages of kids from poor and minority backgrounds taking Advanced Placement and other college-preparatory courses — the benefits of No Child’s accountability measures have also helped high-achieving kids and those from minority backgrounds often ignored by traditional districts before the law’s passage.

The benefits of No Child’s particular focus on holding states and school operators accountable for improving achievement for children from poor and minority households can also been seen in the other reforms spurred by the law. This includes the expansion of high-quality public charter schools, which have proven to improve achievement for many kids from poor and minority households. As Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes has shown in its evaluation of schools in 41 urban communities, charters help kids attain 40 more days of math learning over their traditional district peers. The percentage of fourth-grade charter school students reading Below Basic served by public charter schools declined by 10 percentage points (from 44 percent to 34 percent) between 2009 and 2015, as measured on NAEP, versus a mere two percentage point decline (from 33 percent to 31 percent) for peers in traditional districts.

This isn’t to say that No Child is an unquestioned success. Because the law reaffirmed the role of states in setting education policy and gave them flexibility to meet the law’s requirements, many states gamed the law by failing to elevate (and in some cases, deliberately lower) standards and proficiency targets, then moving to ramp them up just a few years in order to make the case for ending accountability. No Child also didn’t address the super-clusters within public education that shape what happens in classrooms; this includes university schools of education, which continue to do a shoddy job of recruiting and training the teachers whose talents are the most-critical factor in improving (or bringing down) student achievement.

Yet for all of its flaws, No Child was the single-biggest advance in education policy, both at the federal level and among states and local governments, since the Defense Education Act of 1958. For the first time in the history of American public education, federal education policy set clear goals for improving student achievement in reading and mathematics, and finally focused attention on using data in measuring teacher quality. It also made it clear to suburban districts that they could no longer continue to commit educational malpractice against poor and minority children, as well as focused American public education on achieving measurable results instead of condemning kids to low expectations.

Thanks to No Child’s focus on graduation rates, researchers, news outlets, and advocates shed light on the nation’s education crisis, and revealed how states shamefully reported inaccurate graduation rate numbers to hide the reality that far too many children were dropping out. The revelations forced education officials to take much-needed steps in reporting accurate (and sobering) numbers. Most importantly, No Child also proved that accountability (and the information on performance that it unleashes) works. For reform-minded governors and school leaders, No Child’s accountability measures gave them the tools they needed to beat back opposition to their efforts from traditionalists in their own states. Without No Child, far more children would be illiterate and innumerate than now.

But if the masterminds behind the misnamed Every Student Succeeds Act have their way, the futures of children, especially those from the poor and minority households long-abused educationally by American public education, will be condemned to poverty and prison. This may be pleasing to them and to traditionalists (along with erstwhile reformers) who support passing it. But it is morally reprehensible, intellectually indefensible, and a violation of both the federal civil rights obligation and basic humanity. Everyone involved in crafting and supporting this shoddy replacement for No Child should be ashamed of themselves.