Although educational assessment has played a pivotal role in American education for well more then 50 years, it remained in the background of our nation's policy debated and was considered a technical, if not esoteric, field. This chapter explores what events and trends led to the transformation of educational assessment into nightly "table talk", the strong political dimension to educational assessment, and aspects of government educators and policymakers should bear in mind as they go about their work. (GCP)