In the 1990s and 2000s, New Zealand governments monitored national educational performance broadly through cyclical "light-sampling" of primary school students, and the annual proportions of secondary school students who gained formal credentials. In 2008, a centre-right coalition government legislated for national standards of achievement in literacy and numeracy in primary schools. In 2012, individual schools' national standards results were reported publicly for the first time despite professional and popular awareness of their unreliability. To date, New Zealand has not adopted national testing, instead preferring to emphasise the importance of teachers' professional judgments. The paper examines how this uncommon policy position became "conceivable".