It is essential, in analyzing the significance of Spain's Organic Law of Education (2006), as well as its associated measures, to be conscious of the lines of broad, hegemonic ideology that pervade Spanish society and the European Union. The market reforms to which the education system is currently subject leads it to incorporate in an unquestioning way a series of concepts and models of analysis the consequences of which are a greater presence of the techniques of measurement and control of everything that goes on inside the classroom. Standardized performance indicators are claimed to be purely neutral and technical in nature, yet they illustrate how new technocratic concepts are intended to manage and control the education system. The language of standardization adopts an assumed concern for issues of equality and social justice, whereas beneath this kind of rhetoric there resides another, utterly different, philosophy. This ideology in fact believes in a higher degree of control and hierarchization of the education system which, moreover, gives rise to a displacement in the decision-making structure. Experts and technical advisors from the State Educational Administration usurp functions from schools and effectively reduce the scope for democratic governance in these. (Contains 4 notes. Contains a bibliography.)