This essay responds to Jill Williams and Sara Tolbert (2021) and discusses the similarities and differences in curriculum, classroom, teaching and standards between Arizona, USA, and Victoria, Australia. Williams and Tolbert relate a good news story in a state of neoliberal educational despair. This essay argues that, from a relatively well supported Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education perspective in Victoria, the marginalised story they tell is to be envied. This argument draws attention to curriculum deficiencies, teacher qualifications and testing regimes as sources for concern. [For "'They Have a Lot More Freedom than They Know': Science Education as a Space for Radical Openness," by Jill Williams and Sara Tolbert, see EJ1291093.]