In today’s world of international testing and country league tables, nations with high scoring students are held up as exemplars of great educational systems to be emulated by others. Is this a valid way to compare educational system quality? Is the problem international testing or poor quality comparative education research? Are there ways to use test data to gain better insights into how nations educate their children, and what this implies for national development the future of culture and education in the 21st century? In his discussion of these issues, Professor Carnoy will draw on his new book—The Transformation of Comparative Education: Fifty Years of Theory Building at Stanford, which traces the various underlying conceptualizations for understanding education and educational change internationally and intra-nationally.