This paper in commenting on the contributions to this special number demonstrates the necessity of historicizing and contextualizing the rise of test- and standards-based modes of accountability in contemporary education policy globally. Both are imperative for understanding specific national manifestations of what has become a globalized educational policy discourse, namely, that such modes of accountability will drive up student performance and thus enhance the global economic competitiveness of nations. New modes of testing might be seen as a new-old system, given the provenance of testing in schooling systems. The paper will argue that there are global and national elements to this policy situation, with national and global testing of students and school systems sitting in symbiotic relationships with each other. It will also be argued that high-stakes testing has become a fourth message system of schooling that steers today the practices of schools and teachers in classrooms, often with reductive anti-educational effects. Comment will also be made about how these educational developments fit within the broader structure of feeling and how they open up possibilities for edu-businesses to take an increasing role in policy.