Education

'professional educators,' big capital, and politicians in the determination of education policy.

with big capital funding the work & direction of the professional educators and the politicians enacting their favored research into policy.

just one example:

Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has a long and distinguished history.

It is an independent policy and research center, whose primary activities of research and writing have resulted in published reports on every level of education...Influential Foundation achievements include development of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), publication of the Flexner Report on medical education, creation of the Carnegie Unit, founding of the Educational Testing Service...

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/about-us/foundation-history

Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization.[1] It is presently headquartered near Princeton, New Jersey.

ETS develops various standardized tests primarily in the United States for K–12 and higher education, and it also administers international tests including the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) General and Subject Tests....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Testing_Service

Everything about the testing regimes in US education was a product of private capital + politics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Testing_Service