No, of course it wasn’t a coincidence: the “accountability” era directly incentivized more assessment fraud and so there was a lot more assessment fraud. The problem with worshipping accountability in education is that accountability only works if people being held accountable have direct control over the metrics of interests, and teachers don’t. I assure you, no matter how you hold my track coach accountable, there is no world in which I would be better than a (generously speaking) 25th percentile sprinter. We are constrained by reality.