It is nearly impossible today to discuss education without considering testing and evaluation. In the opening article of this volume, professors Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck, and Stobart (2017) lay out the challenge of putting learning and teaching first, tracing the development of the science of educational assessment and raising the question neither psychometricians nor scholars of learning are eager to discuss: Can the two be fruitfully combined to improve the quality of education? This commentary addresses this question. For most countries, the fundamental challenge is no longer how to teach more and more students the basic skills of arithmetic and decoding simple texts, but rather how to teach them to solve problems and to reason, to exercise personal judgement, and go beyond the routine. Yet in the U.S., assessment continues to focus largely on how many "bits and pieces" of information students have accumulated and how quickly they can access them. In this commentary written from an American perspective, the authors first examine historical factors that shaped the tests that are widely used today. Then they reflect on where assessment and learning practices currently stand. Finally, they speculate on ways to move forward in the fields of assessment and learning. [This article is a commentary on Jo-Anne Baird et al.'s "Assessment and Learning: Fields Apart" (EJ1149539).]