When the FIFA World Cup ends, everyone knows who won. In American life, everyone claims they are winning.

Politicians are winning. Companies are winning. Universities are winning. Social media influencers are winning. The question is whether we still agree on what winning actually means. More importantly, who gets to decide?

For most of human history, winning implied some relationship between effort and outcome. Success was demonstrated rather than declared. Claims were expected to correspond with evidence. Results and rules mattered because they provided a basis for evaluation. Winning was meaningful precisely because it was constrained by reality. If outcomes did not align with promises, leaders and institutions were expected to explain the gap.

Today, that relationship feels increasingly uncertain. Politicians routinely declare victory regardless of outcomes. Philanthropic organizations celebrate activity without carefully examining impact. Educational institutions highlight favorable indicators while ignoring more consequential measures of success. Winning often functions less as an outcome and more as a narrative. The language of success becomes detached from the evidence that would normally justify it.

This shift has profound implications. Democracy depends upon shared understandings of success and failure. If winning can be declared regardless of outcomes, then failure effectively disappears. Without the possibility of failure, there is little basis for learning, reflection, or improvement. Institutions become increasingly insulated from critique because performance no longer serves as a meaningful standard of evaluation.

The Democratic Challenge of Accountability

Recently, I found myself thinking about these questions due to a Terms of Engagement podcast conversation hosted by the Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation featuring Archon Fung, Pepper Culpepper of University of Oxford, Taeku Lee, and Stephen Richer. The discussion centered on Culpepper and Lee’s book Billionaire Backlash, which explores how democratic societies hold concentrated power accountable. Their research suggests that scandals sometimes create rare moments when popular forces become powerful enough to overcome extraordinary concentrations of wealth and influence. Enron, Cambridge Analytica, and Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal all illustrate situations where public outrage created openings for accountability that otherwise may not have existed.

What struck me most was not simply the discussion of billionaires. It was a question embedded in the event itself: In an era when norms seem to be constantly defined downward, is anything scandalous anymore? That question reaches far beyond billionaires, corporations, or politics. It gets at the heart of how democratic societies maintain accountability. Scandals matter because they represent moments when evidence becomes impossible to ignore. They create opportunities for institutions and citizens to impose consequences on actors who might otherwise avoid them.

But scandals can only perform that function if societies retain a shared understanding that some behaviors, outcomes, and failures remain unacceptable. Nowadays, scandals often fail to generate accountability because public disclosure is treated as a substitute for consequences. Politicians, business leaders, and their supporters openly acknowledge financial malfeasance that might once have ended careers, as though admitting the behavior somehow makes it acceptable. If every controversy becomes normalized, if every ethical breach becomes routine, and if every failure can be explained away through strategic communication, then the power of scandal begins to disappear. Accountability becomes increasingly difficult because public attention wanes and institutional responses are weakened. The issue is not whether illegal wrongdoing occurs. The issue is whether democratic institutions retain the capacity to recognize it, evaluate it, and respond to it.

The challenge facing democratic societies is therefore not simply whether powerful actors can influence institutions. Influence has always existed. The deeper challenge is whether institutions retain the capacity to distinguish between what is claimed and what is achieved. Accountability depends upon that distinction because citizens must have confidence that outcomes matter more than narratives and that evidence matters more than declarations. When that confidence erodes, public trust begins to weaken and legitimacy becomes increasingly fragile.

Accountability Is Also a Question of Power

This conversation about accountability is often treated as a technical question. How should we measure performance? What metrics should we use? What indicators matter most? Yet accountability is never merely technical. It is also a question of power.

Accountability systems determine who gets to define success. They determine whose experiences count as evidence. They determine which outcomes receive attention and which outcomes remain invisible. They influence who is rewarded, who is sanctioned, who receives resources, and who is blamed when things go wrong. In that sense, accountability systems are not simply mechanisms for measuring performance. They are mechanisms for exercising power.

One of the central failures of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law was that it concentrated authority over student success in a relatively narrow set of indicators while marginalizing broader democratic conversations about what schools should accomplish. Communities were told what success looked like. Educators were told how it would be measured. Students were expected to adapt to definitions of achievement that often reflected the priorities of policymakers rather than the lived realities of the communities being governed. The result was an accountability system that frequently exercised power over difference rather than engaging difference democratically.

This is why the conversation about accountability intersects so directly with questions of democratic governance. The challenge is accountable to whom, accountable for what, and accountable according to whose definition of success. Those questions are fundamentally about power. They determine who has authority to define problems, establish goals, evaluate outcomes, and impose consequences.

The same questions emerge in the Terms of Engagement podcast discussion about billionaire influence mentioned above. Democratic accountability is ultimately a struggle over whether concentrated power can define success on its own terms or whether broader publics retain the capacity to participate in those judgments. In education, corporations, government, and civil society alike, accountability becomes meaningful only when diverse communities have genuine opportunities to influence the standards by which institutions are evaluated.

What Twenty Years of Accountability Research Taught Me

Pressure, ranking, and punishment did not produce the just and democratic educational system that was promised by 2014, and that lesson should not be forgotten simply because some people have become newly nostalgic for test-based accountability.

But there is an even deeper lesson. The problem with No Child Left Behind was not simply that it relied too heavily on testing. The problem was that it concentrated power. Decisions about what counted as success increasingly migrated away from local communities and toward policymakers, testing corporations, consultants, advocacy organizations, and philanthropic foundations. Accountability became something done to communities rather than something created with communities. The people most affected by educational decisions often had the least influence over the standards by which success would be judged.

That concentration of power should sound familiar. It is one of the central concerns raised in the Harvard discussion about billionaire influence. Whether we are talking about financial markets, democratic governance, or public education, the question is often the same: Who gets to define success? Who gets to establish the rules? Who gets to decide whether institutions are succeeding or failing? When those decisions become concentrated among a relatively small group of powerful actors, accountability can begin to lose its democratic character.

During the height of the education reform era from 2009-2016, some of the nation’s wealthiest foundations invested hundreds of millions of dollars in accountability systems, standardized testing initiatives, teacher evaluation systems, and market-based reforms. These efforts were often advanced by smart and well-intentioned people. Yet many of these reforms reflected what might be called a “smartest people in the room” theory of change: The belief that experts, philanthropists, policymakers, and technocrats could design solutions for communities rather than with them. The result was frequently a form of accountability that elevated technical expertise while diminishing democratic participation.

That experience helped shape my invention of the community-based accountability approach used in California’s Local Control and Accountability Plan framework. LCAP is not perfect, but it represents a fundamentally different theory of governance. Rather than concentrating power in distant institutions, it attempts to create structures through which parents, students, educators, and communities can participate in defining priorities and evaluating success. The goal is not to eliminate accountability. The goal is to democratize it.

The lesson of the past two decades is not that accountability should disappear. The lesson is that accountability should become more democratic. We should pay attention to indicators connected to the school-to-prison pipeline, meaningful access to college and career opportunities, postsecondary persistence, economic mobility, civic participation, and long-term well-being.

We should care about who is being excluded, pushed out, denied access, or prevented from participating fully in opportunities that shape life chances. Most importantly, communities should have a meaningful voice in defining the outcomes that matter. Democratic accountability is not simply about measuring performance. It is about ensuring that power remains accountable to the people most affected by its decisions.

Conclusion: Choosing a Better Definition of Winning

The deeper question is not whether we need accountability in a democratic society. The deeper question is whether we will remain capable of defining success in ways that are transparent, evidence-based, and responsive to the people they serve. Accountability is ultimately about maintaining a credible connection between power and responsibility. It is about ensuring that claims remain connected to evidence and that institutions remain accountable to the public rather than merely to themselves.

Whether we are talking about schools, universities, corporations, nonprofit organizations, or democratic institutions, the principle remains the same. Winning should not be measured by how effectively organizations tell their stories. Winning should be measured by whether they achieve the outcomes they claim to value. Institutions earn legitimacy not by declaring success but by demonstrating it. They earn trust not through messaging alone but through measurable impact.

That lesson brings me back to Western Michigan University. When enrollment declines were explained as inevitable because other institutions were struggling, there was always a story available to justify the results. The narrative was comforting for those in charge because it shifted responsibility elsewhere. But narratives do not enroll students. Explanations do not change trajectories. Excuses do not create opportunity. What ultimately mattered was whether enrollment increased, whether students succeeded, and whether the institution was moving closer to its goals. As Provost, winning meant we produced measurable enrollment, graduation and retention results, not simply explaining why they had not yet occurred.

That is why I have become increasingly concerned by a broader tendency in American life to redefine success rather than achieve it. When President Donald Trump declared, “We win, regardless in Iran,” he captured a mindset that extends far beyond politics. If winning can be declared regardless of outcomes, then accountability becomes unnecessary. If success exists independent of results, then evidence no longer matters. Winning becomes a narrative rather than an achievement. The danger is not simply that people make exaggerated claims. The danger is that institutions begin to believe those claims themselves.

The question raised by the Harvard discussion about billionaire influence points in the same direction. Democratic societies depend upon the ability to evaluate outcomes honestly, impose consequences when necessary, and distinguish between what is promised and what is delivered. The challenge is whether institutions retain the capacity to evaluate power according to standards that are public, transparent, and evidence-based. Without that capacity, accountability weakens and legitimacy begins to erode.

We can continue rewarding narratives (e.g. fake news), or we can insist on results. Because winning is not saying you are winning. Winning is not explaining why you did not win. Winning is not redefining the scoreboard after the game is over. Winning is actually winning.

Please share.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is a nationally recognized public scholar, commentator, and civil rights advocate. He has appeared on major media platforms including Democracy Now!, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, NBC News, PBS, and Univision. His media work reflects a longstanding commitment to making complex policy and leadership issues accessible, urgent, and meaningful.

References

For more than two decades, my scholarship has examined these questions from multiple angles. While the specific topics varied, many of these studies explored a common concern: who gets to define success, how accountability systems distribute power, and whether public institutions remain responsive to the communities they serve. This work includes the following peer reviewed articles:

Understanding the Interaction Between High-Stakes Graduation Tests and English Language Learners

Accountability Texas-Style: The Progress and Learning of Urban Minority Students in a High-Stakes Testing Context (with Linda Darling-Hammond)

Examining the Myth of Accountability, High-Stakes Testing and the Achievement Gap

Equity, High-Stakes Testing and Accountability: Why Have NCLB and High-Stakes Reforms Failed?

At-Risk Student Averse: Risk Management and Accountability

As Good as Advertised? Tracking Urban Student Progress Through High School in an Environment of Accountability