Purpose: This study aims to draw from overlapping scholarship in critical policy studies and governmentality studies to examine how recent standards-based education policies mark a pivotal shift in the aims and governance of English education. Design/methodology/approach: The author traces this shift through a comparative analysis of the past two standards projects in the USA: the 1996 IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts and the 2010 Common Core State Standards. Findings: An analysis of the standards' comparative development processes, educational aims and governmentalities exemplifies a global shift toward new policy networks, neoliberal imaginaries and the interrelated policy technologies of managerialism, performativity and free markets. Originality/value: This paper hopes to prompt more critical, reflexive and strategic stances towards standardization and the ways in which global education policies seek to reshape subject English and the future of teaching and teacher education.