Especially, I fear that they are measuring crystallized knowledge rather than “raw horsepower.”

I think until you have a reading culture, a test-taking culture, and the whole academic ethos of Scarsdale, it’s not clear to what extent the scores are comparable across cultures and continents.

That is not to say that I disbelieve the scores, or that I consider the scores to be of no value. Rather, I’m arguing that the scores are “pseudo-precise.”

Robert Sternberg has said it better than I can. Dr. James Thompson is worth reading, and I learn a lot from his blog. I’m not sure we know how to interpret the test data coming out of Africa.

The very fact their GDP diverges from their mathematical skills strongly challenges the idea of economies needing educated workforces.

Further, we should expect the self-righteous scholar caste (progressives) to say everyone needs to be like them and judge themselves like them, with zero or negative justification. We should expect them to bullshit it, in other words.

It’s rather likely that “student attainment” is zero sum, that when the economy really needs someone who knows math, it also finds a way to teach them, with or without schools, and that the actual proportion who need it is ridiculously tiny.