Taming chance in education has become one of the top priorities in curriculum policy making. Inthis presentation we ask the explorative question; how come we ended up here? There is of courseno easy answer to such a question. We acknowledge three notions of importance in understandingthe political quest for taming chance in education. These are control, prediction, and comparison.At first, they may seem like ordinary concepts but by historicizing on them we are trying toillustrate that they in no sense of the word are everyday concepts, rather they come embedded in ahistorically developed reasoning on education with a story to tell on how to tame chance ineducation. Here we make use of Tröhlers (2011) concept of “languages of education” to betterunderstand how people have come to share convictions identifying some social phenomenon aseducational issues. We use the reauthorization of the American No Child Left Behind Act, theinternational firm of McKinsey & Company and the OECD as empirical examples in our discussionof the contemporary international language of education. What is demonstrated in the differentexamples is that they all in some respect direct their communication to an audience, and that they,for being successful, must align to a contemporary language built around concepts such as,accountability, test, efficacy, effectiveness, achievements, assessments, measurements, inclusion,best-practice and evidence. Furthermore, this is a language built around specifically designednumbers (cf. Porter, 1995) and images such as graphs, tables, and spreadsheets (cf. Halpern, 2014).We argue that this is a language that comes with a story based on a desire to tame chance ineducation.In addition, our examination shows that the notions under scrutiny are also attached with, whatwe refer to as, addendums for legitimacy. These addendums for legitimacy are in turn connected to highly prized qualities within science and society on how to ‘tell the truth’ and how to make useof trustworthy knowledge. The addendums we observe as being attached to our notions areobjectivity, certainty, and applicability. As for objectivity we follow the historical development ofthe addendum and show how objectivity instantiated into society and science came to beinterpreted as the rule of law instead of men (Porter, 1995) where the rule of law implies asubordination of personal interests and prejudices to public standards. As for certainty, we arguethat the strivings to transform uncertainties into certainties derives from a human wish toinfluence, control, and predict the present as well as the future (Hacking, 1990). Finally, we followthe historical lines of the addendum applicability up until its current accentuation within thecurriculum policy discourse of ‘what works’.Based on our examination we conclude with a critical discussion about the contemporary strivesto tame chance in education through control, predication and comparison and its consequences foreducational research and practice.