I'm on my way out the door so I'll address a couple of points. Federal dollars only make up about 10% of school budgets. But that 10% is important. Technically schools don't have to accept any of those dollars and adhere to any mandates. The feds typically stick to special education and things like nutrition. They do not dictate curriculum or what needs to be taught in schools.

Our school did not use textbooks the last 10 years I was there. It was a program called "Beyond Textbooks". We didn't have to worry about how textbook publishers tried to skew books.

Our kids reported bullying. As an administrator bullying was the #1 disciplinary issue I dealt with. Yet our character education instruction greatly diminished bullying. It was a great program.

Our ACT scores were unchanged in the twenty years that I was a principal in our school. Ironically my ACT score was well below our schools average ACT score. (blooper