Quote of the Day

Mr. Obama agreed that “we have piled on a lot of standardized tests” under federal education law, meaning the annual proficiency tests in reading and math given to Grades 3 through 8 as well as once in high school.
“Now, there’s nothing wrong with a standardized test being given occasionally just to give a base line of where kids are at,” he continued. “Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn’t a high-stakes test. It wasn’t a test where they had to panic.”

Mr. Obama went on to denounce how standardized tests had narrowed the curriculum and led to teaching to the test.

“Too often,” he said, “what we’ve been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools.”

New York Times - Education via Teaching Tolerance

My understanding is that one of the reasons Bush started this program was because some of his cronies were in the testing business and he "owed" them..  I have no verification for this but it sounds like him.