Teacher Rebellion: Refusal to Administer Standardized Testing Spreads in Washington

alternet.org — The teachers are rising up again—and this time, they’re going after standardized tests. In Seattle, a boycott against the national Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) tests is spreading across high schools. At Garfield High School, where the boycott began, 19 teachers called a press conference to announce that they would refuse to give the tests because they are a waste of time and resources for the students. The test scores do not affect the students’ grades or ability to graduate, and the test’s material itself has nothing to do with the students’ classes or curriculum—meaning that students rarely take the tests seriously. Despite this irrelevance, however, teachers in the Seattle school district learned that this year, the MAP test scores would be used to measure their teacher evaluations—spurring frustration and anger

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