The emphasis on uniform education standards, high-stakes tests to measure student mastery of those standards, and the inherent value of a school with high test scores has dominated the public-education system for some time now—at least since the passage of NCLB in 2001. A recent report by the Council of Great City Schools found that kids in large, urban school districts across the U.S. will take an average of 113 standardized tests before they graduate from high school.
— Inside Seattle’s grassroots uprising against high-stake tests (Seattle Weekly)