This article examines the concept of misrecognition as advanced by Pierre Bourdieu in the development and implementation of educational leadership standards in the USA and in England. The line of argument advanced is that leadership standards were promulgated as an agenda to control and dominate a contested field in both countries by certain individuals and agencies. The analysis proffers that the steps involved in the creation of national leadership standards will not lead to reform since they are embedded in reified current roles and practices. The net result explains why a nation's educational leadership standards cannot become excellent via standardisation, and why significant educational reform is highly unlikely as a result of the processes employed to construct and impose them on practitioners, universities, schools, and school systems. (Contains 76 footnotes.)