Why did No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) test-based reforms fail? Why did our enormously expensive efforts flop? Why did we fail to get America’s students “up to grade level” by 2014 as demanded? Considering the time and money many school districts sank into pulling up test scores, why do hundreds of thousands of American high school graduates remain unready for college or university classes?

While the achievement gap between our more and less fortunate students in different zip codes is regularly reviewed by pundits and newscasters, a critical question tends to fall below the radar: What if current educational policy is contributing to the lack of progress in our academically-challenged zip codes? What if bars in some academically-challenged zip codes have risen because our students have learned what to expect on the test, while learning practically nothing else? What if some bars are stagnant or falling because students were unready to learn the material on the test – but were offered nothing else?

Today’s educational climate moves too quickly. Various Drs. Frankenstein in state and federal bureaucracies funnel energy into new programs only to watch their creations rise and die. No one does an autopsy, not one worthy of the name anyway. When Race to the Top becomes a Race to Nowhere, suddenly ESSA rises, the new focus of professional development meetings and seminars everywhere.

Where did No Child Left Behind fail? Where — if anywhere — did it succeed? Why do we need ESSA? Did Frankenstein need a bride? What are we doing? Where are the autopsies? Why did all those students fail the PARCC test? What did those failures mean?

Eduhonesty: Unqualified and underqualified government officials keep mandating educational fixes based on untested, unpiloted programs such as RtI, NCLB and Race to the Top. I understand the desperation. But these mail-order-diploma, academic surgeons never seem to stop to find out why the patient failed to improve. In the case of PARCC, I’d say the patient died. But we still give PARCC tests in many places, if fewer now than when the test first came out.

Where are the autopsies? We might learn a great deal from stopping long enough to carefully analyze where and how our efforts failed — and where they succeeded — before we attack Education with yet another knife.