critical perspective on the consequences of large scale national and international test use.

Tests worldwide serve as tools to control national educational agendas and to provide feedback to governments, policy makers, educational systems and schools. Yet, ample negative criticism has been voiced in the testing literature regarding the damage external tests cause to various educational agents: students, teachers and principals (Tsagari & Cheng 2017; Shohamy 2001), and to the development of academic knowledge (Hopfenbeck, 2018). This is because unintended consequences are used to advance new nationalist political agendas which are often in contradiction with educational interests. In this paper we report on the impact and consequences of two language tests: a national test developed and administered by the Israeli Ministry of Education in Israel, entitled ‘Meitzav’, and the PISA international tests developed by the OECD. Both tests share high visibility within the Israeli ecological assessment system and are widely debated in the public media. The data for this study, collected from various sources such as official documents, media sources, interviews with policy experts, teachers and principals, point to the negative effects both tests bring about which outweigh their benefits. However, fierce protests against these adverse consequences have focused primarily on the national test leading policy makers to reconsider its possible abolishment, while administration of the international test continues uninterruptedly with limited controversy. The presentation will bring forth the differential consequences of the two tests emerging from their contradictory agendas: the contextually relevant national language test which provides feedback to schools at the price of negative washback, and the removed international test which is oblivious to contextual language intricacies and knowledge development. We will consider the political populist purposes the tests serve while overlooking the students and their individual linguistic and social needs, and conclude with a call for a critical perspective on the consequences of large scale national and international test use.