ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how assessment practices, particularly various forms of standardized tests at the national level, have sought to govern practices in schools, and acted as key mechanisms of and for accountability in schooling settings. The chapter begins with an overview of processes of governance through numbers and data more broadly. An account is then provided of processes of governance through international large-scale assessments, particularly PISA, followed by a review of the nature and effects of standardized testing practices at varied national and subnational levels. This serves as a precursor to considering the example of assessment practices in Australia, specifically in the state of Queensland, where the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has had particularly consequential effects, even as the use of standardized tests for more performative purposes is challenged. Through the empirical evidence provided in the latter part of the chapter, notions of more performative and more authentic accountability practices are explicated. The chapter concludes with a call to challenge the use of various forms of numbers as technologies for more performative accountability purposes.
