Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, blames both Republicans and Democrats for excessive standardized testing. In an interview with NPR, she said, “I don’t care if you were Ted Kennedy or George Bush. Nobody thought to say to a third-grade teacher: What would happen if we just demanded that every child in America hit a particular score on a standardized test or they get punished? What might be the unintended consequences?”

Although the union gives far more support to Democrats than to the GOP, Eskelsen Garcia credited both parties for trying to fix overtesting. “Everything was done so poorly that … Republicans and Democrats and President Obama agreed to stop doing stupid things,” she said, referring to the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015.