TY  - JOUR
AB  - Twenty-five years ago, the United States was on the cusp of a major expansion of the federal government’s role in K-12 education policy. The No Child Left Behind legislation passed with bipartisan support and established standards and accountability as strategies to improve education. Until roughly 2013, reading and math scores did improve; however, in the years since, student achievement on test scores has gone down, and this trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the last decade, with new and rising challenges for educational outcomes, how has the politics of education at the federal level changed? What happened to bipartisan support for the standards-based accountability regime, and what has replaced it? We code and analyze longitudinal data on changes in party positions, congressional hearings, and executive action on education. After the adoption of No Child Left Behind ushered in a bipartisan education accountability policy regime, K-12 education started to recede from the Congressional agenda. Since 2015, growing attention to K-12 education from the executive branch and increasing partisan polarization around culture war issues have eroded the accountability regime. Executive actions during the Biden and Trump presidencies have steered education towards a broader array of high conflict issues focused on racial equity, gender, and curriculum. These changes have produced policy regime decay and little consistency or direction for state and local policymakers in K-12 education.
AU  - Saltmarsh, Jason 
AU  - Scribner, Jay P. 
AU  - Elliot, Chawrdi 
AU  - Marinus, Cheyenne 
PY  - 2026
ST  - Sensemaking in the Program Stream: How Local Leaders Re-purposed the “ALL In Virginia” Policy
TI  - Sensemaking in the Program Stream: How Local Leaders Re-purposed the “ALL In Virginia” Policy
UR  - http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1493
ER  -