The infamous MAP test is set to be administered in my son’s school this week. The MAP is a computerized test meant to measure students in math and reading. Seattle Public Schools initially required MAP kindergarten through high school, with multiple testing periods per year. In 2013, Garfield High School launched a boycott of the …
A couple of weeks ago, Gwen Ifill and the PBS News Hour crew flew to Seattle. They spent one day following me and one day following the richest person who ever lived, Bill Gates, to ask us about our ideas on education reform. I was simply shocked to hear that they would be running an …
Last week the Seattle School District told my kindergarten son to take the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test. Given my intense relationship with this specific standardized test--an exam that has forever altered the course of my life--this was a particularly unsettling moment for me. As an authentic assessment activist, I had helped organize a …
Continue reading Scrap the MAP Test: My Kindergartener Joins the Opt Out Movement!
Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s updated primary source companion to A People’s History of the United States includes Amber Kudla’s anti-standardized testing graduation speech and Jesse Hagopian’s reflection on the Seattle MAP test boycott. Since its publication in 2004, Voices of a People’s History of the United States has played a vital role in my …
On Thursday of last week I attended a meeting of the Garfield High School Assessment Committee. A report on one of many after school meetings may seem mundane. A committee of educators tasked with discussing assessment might appear innocuous. Yet that gathering of fifteen or so educators sharing their experience, expertise, and asking questions about …
I AM AN EDUCATOR 
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