What he said!

Skoolboy is doing the posting on Eduwonkette again, continuing the discussion of test-based accountability, and makes some points well worth noting. Especially this one:

Lots of commercial enterprises and non-profits owe their livelihood to public education, and are engaged in an ongoing project to shape our definitions of "real school."

Testing is big business in the U.S. Non-profits such as the Educational Testing Service and ACT have annual gross revenues approaching $900 million and $400 million, respectively. ETS's K-12 testing operation had gross revenues of $172 million in their 2006 IRS filings. On the for-profit side, Pearson Education had gross revenues worldwide of $4.6 billion in 2006, with $600 million in adjusted operating profit. Their annual report crowed of a "healthy outlook in school testing underpinned by 2005 contract wins with a lifetime value of $700m (including Texas, Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota)." McGraw-Hill Education had revenues of $2.7 billion in 2007, with operating profit of $400 million.

With this much money, and more, at stake, you can bet that there are ongoing projects to define tests and testing as the appropriate way of defining what counts as good education.