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(Kaplan’s SAT program is one of an array of test-prep courses that the company is contracted to “deliver” in schools nationwide. In New York City, Kaplan provides NCLB- mandated tutoring for the high school Regents exams and the subject exams administered to students in the third through eighth grades.) Many educators argue that the gains from prep courses are negligible and the programs themselves ultimately harmful, since they drain precious funds and class time. A recent Chicago Public Schools study examining student performance on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills found “little difference between tutored students and those who were eligible but did not receive tutoring.” The price tag for supplemental tutoring in Chicago, which 60,000 students received in the 2004–2005 school year: $50 million

I also was curious to find out how the company had changed in recent years. No Child Left Behind had opened up new vistas of opportunity for testing companies, and I had heard that Kaplan had charged forward by radically expanding its services within schools.

Schools that repeatedly fail to meet these benchmarks can be closed, taken over by private corporations, or restructured. Schools with high-poverty populations that receive federal aid (known as Title I funds) and fail for three straight years to demonstrate “progress” toward full proficiency are required to spend up to 20 percent of this federal money on tutoring or transportation costs for students who choose to transfer out of their current school.

For the New York schools “in need of improvement,” this means preparing students—many of whom are utterly lacking in basic academic skills and subject knowledge—to pass a battery of standardized exams. Toward this end, it also means paying money to outside entities (often private companies such as Kaplan, the Princeton Review, and Newton Learning) up to $2,000 per student for courses focused not on improving content knowledge or on intensive educational counseling but on strategies for a “particular testing task.” (The total annual government expenditure per student in New York City is $15,000.)

The failure of schools serving low-income students has been a windfall for the testing industry. Title I funds earmarked for test tutoring increased by 45 percent during the first four years of NCLB, from $1.75 billion in 2001 to $2.55 billion in 2005.

With the ever growing stream of funding flowing through the nation’s schools, the number of supplemental-service providers nationwide has exploded. In New York City, the number of providers approved by the state’s department of education jumped from forty-seven in 2002–2003, the first full school year of NCLB, to 202 today. To capitalize on these new revenue opportunities, Kaplan has acquired Achieva, a provider of online course materials to schools, and SpellRead, a national “reading-intervention” company. In 2003, Kaplan hired former N.Y.C. Chancellor of Education Harold Levy as an executive vice president and general counsel, and in 2006 relocated its headquarters for Kaplan K12, the division of the company that works in schools, from Midtown Manhattan to luxury offices downtown. According to Crain’s, the company made the move “to be closer to the New York City Department of Education.”

Not wanting to be limited in its offerings to schools, Kaplan recently entered the business of selling content-based lesson plans. Although the shift from testing strategies to classroom content is a departure for Kaplan, the company sees little difference between the two. Earlier this spring, I designed a genetics class for Kaplan’s “Lesson Bank,” an online repository of short lessons that, for a fee, teachers can download in PDF form. As writers of the curriculum, we were repeatedly told that the materials had to provide hassle-free prep for teachers. When I submitted a first draft of a high school lesson on Mendelian genetics, the Kaplan staffer overseeing production, Tyler DeWitt, told me it was too complex. “We’re really trying to almost script lessons,” DeWitt wrote via email, “so that teachers who may be new or not the greatest (or smartest) teachers in the world can follow the ‘script’ and still give a great lesson.” For $35 an hour, I obliged and watered down the material, removing all “advanced” content points,

The company’s revenues have jumped from $354 million in 2000 to more than $2 billion today, and it is now the most profitable subsidiary of its parent, The Washington Post Company, accounting for almost half of the conglomerate’s income. More telling are the margins: in 2003, Kaplan posted a loss of $11.7 million; in 2007, the company reported a $149 million profit. Because the revenues from Kaplan K12 are folded into the test-prep operations, it is impossible to say with precision how much of the company’s income comes from Title I funds.

Indeed, the shows of police force and the prisonlike design elements, now nearly ubiquitous in underserved schools, often hide redeeming aesthetic qualities and important pieces of a school’s past. Once you pass through the security checkpoint that dominates George Washington High’s entryway, the architectural grace and history of the school suddenly come into relief. Two staircases run in torqued parabolas along the edges of the building’s grand atrium. Overhead, a balcony encircles the perimeter; from the balcony hangs a full-length oil painting of George Washington. The Battle of Fort Washington, a major defeat suffered by the American Continental Army in 1776, played out not far from here. The atrium also houses a gallery of the school’s famous alumni: Alan Greenspan, Jacob Javits, Henry Kissinger, Harry Belafonte, the baseball great Rod Carew. Alongside the photograph of Kissinger is a typewritten letter in which the former secretary of state recounts the importance the school held in his early life as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Although he regrets that he must decline the invitation to attend his induction on the school’s of fame,” Kissinger does offer, in absentia, words of encouragement to his G.W. successors: “In America, everything is possible. It’s up to you.”

Some staff members are welcoming and go out of their way to present to itinerants like me the largely hidden idiosyncrasies of a school. As I waited one day to speak with Health Careers’ English faculty about “weaving” forty hours of Kaplan SAT instruction into their busy, test-laden, end-of-year schedules,

Since a day’s coaching brings me a wage that exceeds that of all but the most senior teachers, schools do not want to pay Kaplan’s hefty fees if they are not going to get an “honest” day’s teaching out of it.

the school’s no-nonsense principal, Sana Nasser, is able to maintain order in such a crowded school through the use of a new surveillance network. When a student is caught breaking a rule, Principal Nasser will sit the offender in front of the video machine. “She’ll cue it up right to the spot,” Laaroussi says. “She can even zoom in. Then she’ll ask, ‘Is that you?’ There’s no arguing with the tape. If the kid tries to deny it, it’s over. He’s out.”

A female student who seems eager to get to work asks Mr. Pacella why they are using this book and not the normal math book. “We’re not learning about math today,” he says, his voice oozing sarcasm. “We’re learning about how to take a test.”

I would also be paid nearly $1,800 to teach the nine hour-and-a-half classes, an astonishing $130 for each hour of my coaching time.