ABSTRACT
It was an unprecedented moment in American educational history. The public, the state, schools, and universities seemed to be perfectly aligned behind a vision of educational reform encapsulated in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. The force behind this alignment has been a powerful coalition of business leaders, politicians, and elite universities1 with the 192money, expertise, and political power to force the nation's schools to construct an accountability system designed to control the outcomes of education, and persuade the voting public to support it.
