Private profit is at the heart of the expensive, oppressive, fear-inducing standardized testing which directly attacks the primary aim of enlightened education. These tests do not test learning; they test compliance as it is impossible to provide educated (meaning knowledge-based) responses.
Privately-owned profit-geared testing intends to foster a sense of failure, for administrators, teachers, students and parents, because most (if not all) the purchased testing regimes, under the guise of rigor, impose their built-in impossibility of success through use of age-inappropriate, due to development and abilities, content and presentation, and are purposely convoluted, meaning confusing and badly written.
As these rounds of top-down imposed standardization of testing is the means to benefit the status-quo or those in charge of top-down controls, the first step was to attack teachers, teacher unions and create the myth of "bad" parenting especially exemplified by those who are economically disadvantaged.
No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are a disaster for the children and for the raising of an active, informed and independent-thinking citizenry.
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