This presentation will compare parallel effects, ambivalences, and differences in school reforms and inclusive politics in the United States (US) and Denmark. These efforts in educational policy in the two countries will be analysed through the lens of market logic and accountability technologies. The 2014 Danish School Reform and the 2009 Race to the Top (RTT) grant fund in the US have many of the same stated intentions, such as raising student achievement in Danish/English and mathematics, and pushing students to fulfil their individual potential. In both cases, testing is used as a primary tool to realize reformative intentions. Both movements are related to global dynamics of OECD, PISA, and market logic. Whereas the Danish School Reform is affected by evaluations by OECD and PISA, every mechanism of RTT is grounded in market competition. For example, the aim for youth to reach their full potential is framed as making students competitive in the global marketplace. Similarly, teacher evaluations are rationalised by market logic, as teachers are positioned as the means by which students will be able to avoid adulthoods characterised by poverty. The role of market logic seems more explicit in the US’s RTT, and more implicit in the Danish School Reform. As part of the comparison, the presentation will examine the idea of optimising students’ academic potential and market-based capacities, as the reforms promote. This idea seems to constitute a certain standard of ‘normal’ a student ought to achieve. Whereas the two movements are expressive concerning how a student is supposed to ‘be’, we find the politics of inclusion also express a compensating technology, or a means to handle those students excluded as problematic and vulnerable, and who in many cases have received a medical diagnosis. Specific policies of inclusion – the 2001 US No Child Left Behind Act and the 2012 Danish ‘Little Inclusion Act’ will be compared with one another, as different compensating technologies. As we will argue in the presentation, both types of educational policies have consequences for the teacher, who is also increasingly subjected to market logic.

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