Historicizing and contextualizing global policy discourses: Test- and standards-based accountabilities in education

This paper in commenting on the contributions to this special numberdemonstrates the necessity of historicizing and contextualizing the riseof test- and standards-based modes of accountability in contemporaryeducation policy globally. Both are imperative for understanding specificnational manifestations of what has become a globalized educationalpolicy discourse, namely, that such modes of accountability willdrive up student performance and thus enhance the global economiccompetitiveness of nations. New modes of testing might be seen as a newoldsystem, given the provenance of testing in schooling systems. Thepaper will argue that there are global and national elements to this policysituation, with national and global testing of students and school systemssitting in symbiotic relationships with each other. It will also be arguedthat high-stakes testing has become a fourth message system of schoolingthat steers today the practices of schools and teachers in classrooms,often with reductive anti-educational effects. Comment will also bemade about how these educational developments fit within the broaderstructure of feeling and how they open up possibilities for edu-businessesto take an increasing role in policy