With its overall strategy of educational monitoring, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (KMK) has put its participation in resp. assignment of student achievement tests (PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS, IQB-comparison of the German states, VERA) and the development of educational standards into a systematic framework. This article balances the historic effort of the German states to implement a system of permanent surveillance in the field of education. It specifies key problems, which have become visible in the process of the strategy. Finally, some lines of a possible further development of the strategy are sketched.

Keywords
educational monitoring, Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Aff airs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany, PISA, VERA, IQB-Comparison of the German states, quality management