ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that the development of standardized quantitative tests is a necessary – but not sufficient – condition for today's close political monitoring of education, the rise of the global testing culture and the use of education as an economic production factor. Few developments are often associated with neoliberalism. The chapter discusses how education can be seen as following dispositives of either the logic of discipline or of security. It examines the subject of inclusion as a similar subject on the path from an excluded position in reflexive and optimizing self-work on the way to an included position. The chapter shows how testing can be a very powerful technology, with strong implications in terms of standards, as well as in terms of what education is or should be. Researchers, politicians, and professionals in schools should keep in mind the need to discuss education critically in its own right, with its own logics and notions.
