In "International approaches to Science Assessment" Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam describe eight major elements of assessment systems and contrast some of the differences among these elements across seven countries. Of particular interest to the author is an issue that cuts across many of these elements, namely, what gets assessed as part of these systems. That is, how do countries manage the tradeoff between assessing the "facts" that student know versus the depth of their understanding for how these facts are interrelated? In science assessment this issue is especially important: can scientific inquiry be content free? Can or should process skills be assessed independently of content knowledge, or vice-versa? In this paper, the author illustrates this issue within the context of a United States history assessment that has recently been in the news.