As part of a research study which deals with the analysis of the links between international tests, education quality and public policies, this paper presents an approach to the disciplinary principles of pisa test and relate them with some aspects of the Colombian curriculum policy. In order to do this, an analysis of pisa rationale documents was done since 2000. It points that in general, pisa and the Colombian curriculum share the approach of competences, but in the case of pisa, the theoretical construct is more related to the cognitive aspects of language than to its sociocultural dimension because of the natural limitations of the standardized tests, among other reasons. Furthermore, there are large distances related with the reading evaluation in digital environments since the Colombian curriculum headlines are not directly addressed to this component.