The Education Department has launched an investigation into discipline rates in Seattle public schools.
Students of color have long been punished in far higher numbers than white students in Seattle, but now the department's Office for Civil Rights is looking at whether black students are disciplined more frequently and more harshly than white students for the same behavior.
Garfield High School's academic dean and testing coordinator, Kris McBride, at a news conference announcing the teachers' boycott of the MAP test in Seattle on Jan. 10.
An entire school of teachers in Seattle is refusing to give students a standardized test that's required by the district. The teachers say the test is useless and wastes valuable instructional time.
Meanwhile, individual teacher protests of standardized tests are popping up nationwide, and the Seattle case may make bigger waves.
