In his seminal research on work standardization, Henry Mintzberg proposed a typology composed of three types: 1) direct supervision, 2) normalization of processes, 3) normalization of results, 4) normalization of skills and 5) mutual adjustment. Given the complexity of educational goals and processes, the first two of these can be simply excluded, even if they has some presence in the history of education. Number 4 would seem the most proper for a public service and a skilled profession, as far as that is precisely the rationale of professionalization. Number 5 seems adequate as an adaptive response to a the uncertain and changing context and goals of schools.
However, these two last options are those actually going but they do not seem to adequately guarantee the quality of education or even the smooth running of schools. This could be explained by two aspects (among others) that distinguish education from other professional contexts: the lack of an adult counterpart on the side of the public and the dissolution of hierarchy due to the atomization of the system in thousands of schools, classrooms, disciplines and functions.
All this makes necessary some form of standardization through the control of results (not only academic results, but also social, etc.), which constitutes the main reason for assessment in its different versions. But the very idea of assessment is fiercely resisted by the profession, for which it means a market logic, a political interference, a surrender to parents particularism or simple nonsense and impossibility. However, such a resistance should not be discussed on logical but on genealogical grounds, as one more instrument of professional social closure against the employer and the public.