A widely held view is that good schools are essential to a nation's international economic success and that high test scores on international tests of academic skills and knowledge indicate how good a nation's schools are. The widespread belief that good schools are an important contributor to a nation's economic success in the world is supported by the effect literacy has on wealth. However, the equally widespread belief that test scores are critical to a nation's economic success is false. There is no valid scientific evidence supporting this assumption, and there is good evidence that it is false. The author contends that it would be a serious mistake to conclude that the negative relationship between test scores and national economic success indicates that education is not of critical importance to a nation's economic success. High test scores have a negative correlation to economic success, but the lesson to be drawn is that test scores are not a good measure of how schools affect the economy in nations where the literacy rate is so high that tests can be administered on a national scale. The author points out that, instead of pursuing the blind alley of raising test scores, researchers must try to understand what it is about schools that really leads to economic success.