Jesse Hagopian

He led the historic 2013 boycott of the MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) test at Garfield High in Seattle, an event that set the stage for the growing nationwide opposition to the inundation of standardized student testing from kindergarten through high school.

Jesse teaches history and is the adviser to the Black Student Union at Garfield. He is an associate editor for the acclaimed Rethinking Schools magazine and editor of, and contributing author to, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. He speaks nationally on the topic and is a founding member of Social Equality Educators (SEE), a recipient of the 2012 Abe Keller Foundation award for “Excellence and Innovation in Peace Education,” the 2013 “Secondary School Teacher of Year” award, and the Special Achievement “Courageous Leadership” award from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. In 2015, Jesse was awarded the “Cultural Freedom Fellowship” from the Lannan Foundation for his nationally recognized work in promoting critical thinking and opposing high-stakes testing.

Jesse and his wife Sarah are the parents of two young children, the oldest of whom has joined his parents by opting out of MAP testing to the Common Core State Standards in his kindergarten class.