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From Staff Reporter Linda Shaw:

Administrators at Seattle’s Garfield High School will begin giving the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests this morning, following meetings Monday between Superintendent Jose Banda and a group of teachers and one with the principal.

Nearly the entire non-administrative staff will continue to boycott the test, said Kris McBride, Garfield’s academic dean and testing coordinator. McBride said she learned early today that testing would begin.

“We’re just really disappointed this is what it’s come to,” she said.

Garfield’s administrators, McBride said, are not happy about giving the test, and more than 100 Garfield parents have asked that their children be excused from taking it, which parents have the right to do.

McBride said Banda told teachers Monday they would receive some kind of discipline for refusing to administer the test, but would not be suspended without pay.

Garfield teachers announced their boycott early last month, and about 70 teachers and other staff at three other schools have joined them.  The protest has received national attention from those who support the teachers’ stand against what they say are time-wasting, useless exams.

At the high school level in Seattle, ninth-graders are required to take the MAP reading test and many must take the MAP math test as well.