I HAVE BEEN dismayed at uncritical acceptance of international comparisons in this country. It seems to me that otherwise competent researchers and psychometricians abandon all critical faculties when dealing with data from International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement -- TIMSS studies and PIRLS -- or Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) -- PISA. Technically put, they go gaga. Clearly, there is political pressure to accept these studies, but I also see them as a small growth industry on which a number of careers depend. Aside from my own analyses (Kappan, May 1998; Kappan, September 1998; and Educational Researcher, May 2000), I know of only three other pieces -- two by Jianjun Wang (Kappan, November 1996; and Kappan, September 1998) and one by Erling Boe and Sujie Shin (Kappan, May 2005) -- that take a more reasoned look at studies. I had to tone down Educational Researcher article to meet requirements of dullness police. Maybe I should move back to Europe, where there are much livelier and more skeptical discussions of these studies. To provide a peek about what's being said across pond, I've gone through my towering to-be-read pile and extracted commentary related to 2000 (Programme for International Student Assessment 2000), first of assessments. In conference notes, Emma Nardi of University of Rome wrote that one could not say much about from results because Italy is a country new to education, unlike France, where education has been a reality since French Revolution. We have not yet succeeded in overcoming fragmentation due to our belated unification declared in 1861. Nardi also noted that there were so few foreign students in Italian results that possibly sample was improperly drawn. The French, not doing as well on as they had in earlier international comparisons, generally slammed it as another manifestation of Yankee Imperialism, now referred to as model. That model includes imposition of national rankings and standardized tests. Marc Romainville of University of Namur, in French Belgium, penned a widely read critique in journal Nouvelle Revue. Romainville first called a projective test, similar to a Rorschach, in which everyone sees what their own idiosyncratic needs determine that they see. But, he continued, All this could be dismissed if dominant tone of media treatment were not working to harm already quite eroded public perception of teachers. The most disturbing, taking all things together, is that once again opprobrium has been heaped, indiscriminately, on thousands of teachers who, day in, day out, and in difficult circumstances, try to teach and hear it said, in response, that their teaching is 'ineffective and inequitable.' Romainville then takes to task very idea of producing a results league table (country-by-country rankings): Hit parades have been flourishing here for some years: best schools, world's best universities, top-performing research centers, etc. Some 30 years ago this sort of ranking would have produced a smile, as we were of view that broad and long-term effects of education cannot be reduced to a few trivial indicators and that every education system could be validly understood only by taking account of its history, its aims, and complexity of its structures. This craze for rankings derives, Romainville argues, from the increasing grip of Anglo-Saxon model. He continues, PISA avoids neither this ranking delusion nor domination of Anglo-Saxon model . . . actual development of tests was responsibility of an Anglo-Saxon consortium of Australian, Japanese, U.S., and Dutch organizations. Romainville conjectures that this consortium first prepared a master test in English, then translated it into French because OECD, sponsoring organization, is officially French-English bilingual. …