The use of standardised tests as a central tool in education policy has in recent decades become a common feature of many national education systems. In 2002 the Israeli Ministry of Education introduced new mandatory state tests for primary and middle schools. The article describes the adoption of these low-stakes tests and assesses their impact…

Recent studies indicate that examiners make a number of intentional and unintentional errors when administering reading assessments to students. Because these errors introduce construct-irrelevant variance in scores, the fidelity of test administrations could influence the results of evaluation studies. To determine how assessment fidelity is…