. . .does real school success involve anything about getting educated and prepared for productive adult life, rather than simply being trained to pass various schoolified tests and become a schoolteacher of same?
At least Vanderbilt U. is asking the question and considering some less creepy answers than the “terse, keen, cross-referencing angels” of cum folder doom from 1929.
- academic attainment,
- acquisition of general education,
- development of academic competence,
- development of cognitive skills and intellectual dispositions,
- occupational attainment,
- preparation for adulthood and citizenship,
- personal accomplishments, and
- personal development.
Cocking A Snook! 
Nance posted this elsewhere and it fits here, a (sort of!)law professor-economist-unschooling dad’s “Case for Unschooling”:
“One of the assumptions built into the conventional version of K-12 schooling, private and public, is that there is some subset of human knowledge, large enough to occupy most of twelve years of school, that everyone needs to know. That assumption is false. . .
Judging sources of information on internal evidence is a very important intellectual skill. In the classroom, that skill is anti-taught. The pupil is told things by two authorities–the teacher and the textbook–and his job is to believe what they say. . .”
[…] EDUCATION WEEK December 20, 2006 This child-led method of home schooling means that what children do during a typical school day is entirely up to them. In an era of increased standardized testing, top-down curricula, and the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, unschooling is attractive to some parents, who say learning should be a more organic, curiosity-inspired exercise. Advocates say it allows children to become passionate about, and invested in, their own learning. […]