Details Written by Donovan M. Smith Special to The Skanner News Published: 28 January 2015

Activist, speaker, writer and teacher at Seattles Garfield High School, Jesse Hagopian (second to the left) is pictured here following an event hosting Olympic legend John Carlos. Hagopian is the author of a new book titled More Than a Score: A New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing. Susan Fried photo

Jesse Hagopian boasts a lot titles, but at the core he is an educator. Hagopian is a teacher at Garfield High School in the rapidly gentrifying Central District in Seattle.

He recently released his first book, More than A Score: A New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, which analyzes the history of standardized testing in America and its close-ties to institutional racism in the country.

The Skanner News Donovan M. Smith spoke with Hagopian after an event he organized last week with Olympic legend John Carlos -- who famously raised his fist for Black Power at the 1968 Games in Mexico to discuss his book.

The Skanner News: Give our readers a general outline of what your role in Seattles education system has been.

Jesse Hagopian: I teach here at Garfield High School and Im co-advisor to the Black Student Union here. And two years ago our faculty voted unanimously to refuse to give a standardized test Measures of Academic Progress [also known as] the MAPwe thought it was harmful to our kids. They threatened all the teachers who refused with a 10 day suspension without pay. The teachers didnt back down, and instead the district had to cancel the test, and its now gone from the high schools in Seattle. And that movement helped to ignite a movement around the country where more and more teachers were refusing to give the test; students are walking out in mass like in Coloradothey had the largest walkout in probably U.S. history against high stakes tests recently; and parents are opting their kids out of the test, and its become the largest movement against high stakes testing in U.S. history. So my book is a chronical of that movement. It has an introduction by former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch. It also has the stories of the parents who opted their kids out--why they did it. The stories of the kids who led walkouts refusing to take the tests and stories of teachers from around country refusing to give it. So its a book thats a testament to the resistance to this corporate education reform and this multi-billion dollar testing industry thats trying to reduce the intellectual process of teaching and learning to a single number. And then they can use that number to label our schools failing so they can close them, so they can deny students graduation so they can bust up the teachers union and fire teachers. Im just glad that this book can be part of that resistance to this corporate reform.

TSN: The #BlackLivesMatter movement is kind of new. Does your book tie in?

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The Skanner Newspaper - More Than A Score: A New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing