This is Part 1 of “The Measurement Gap,” a series examining NWEA’s MAP testing and RIT scores—how they work, why teachers don’t trust them, and how they shape acceleration decisions in Oak Park District 97.

In January 2013, nearly every teacher at Seattle’s Garfield High School did something unprecedented: they unanimously voted to refuse to give a test.

Not the SAT. Not a state graduation exam. A test most parents had never heard of—the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, published by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).

The superintendent threatened 10-day suspensions without pay. The teachers didn’t blink. Parents and students rallied behind them. The boycott spread to other Seattle schools.

By May, the teachers had won. High schools could opt out.

“Spontaneous celebrations” erupted in the hallways of Garfield High.

What made teachers risk their paychecks to stop a standardized test? And why does that test still drive critical educational decisions—including math acceleration—in districts across America, including Oak Park?

The Boycott

The Garfield High boycott wasn’t impulsive. Teachers had specific, documented concerns:

1. The math didn’t work. At the high school level, MAP’s margin of error exceeded the expected annual growth. A student could appear to go backwards simply due to measurement noise.

2. It wasn’t aligned with what they taught. As one teacher put it: “Not aligned with our curriculum—completely useless as a formative assessment.” A University of Washington testing expert confirmed MAP was only “partially aligned” to state learning objectives.

3. It consumed massive instructional time. Computer labs were commandeered for weeks. The testing process “eats up virtually an entire instructional day, and this is done, minimally, 6 times a year.”

4. It harmed vulnerable students. Teachers argued that “MAP especially hurts students receiving extra academic support—English language learners and those enrolled in special education.”

5. The contract itself was tainted. More on that below.

The boycott leaders—Jesse Hagopian, Mallory Clarke, and Kris McBride—became national figures in education activism. Their message was simple: this test isn’t worth the cost.

The Ethics Violation

Here’s what the Garfield teachers knew that most parents didn’t:

Seattle’s superintendent, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, had brought MAP to the district at a cost of $4 million. What she hadn’t disclosed: she simultaneously served on NWEA’s board of directors.

She was approving contracts to buy products from an organization that was paying her.

The Washington State Auditor called it an ethics violation.

This wasn’t a rogue superintendent. It was a pattern. When districts evaluate assessment products, the people making those decisions often have financial relationships with the companies selling them. The education assessment industry operates in a space where the lines between vendor, consultant, and decision-maker blur.

The Study Nobody Talks About

The same year as the Seattle boycott, a federal study delivered a more damaging verdict than any teacher protest could.

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES)—the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education—conducted a randomized controlled trial of MAP testing across 32 elementary schools in five Illinois districts. This wasn’t an opinion piece or advocacy research. It was the gold standard of educational evaluation.

The findings:

“The MAP program did not lead teachers to use differentiated instructional practices any more than control teachers.”

And:

“The MAP program had no statistically significant impact on students’ reading achievement.”

Let that sink in. MAP’s entire purpose is to provide teachers with data to differentiate instruction and improve student outcomes. A rigorous federal study found it did neither.

The study involved 174 regular education reading teachers in grades 4-5. It wasn’t a small sample or a flawed methodology. It was exactly the kind of evaluation that should inform whether schools adopt an assessment system.

Yet districts kept buying MAP. Over 7 million students take it annually. Oak Park District 97 uses it (or did until recently) as a primary measure for acceleration decisions.

The For-Profit Turn

For decades, NWEA operated as a nonprofit organization. Founded in 1977 by educators in Portland, Oregon, its mission was to help teachers understand student learning—not to maximize shareholder value.

That changed in 2023.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) acquired NWEA, converting it from a nonprofit to a for-profit subsidiary of a major education publishing company.

HMH isn’t just an assessment company. They publish curriculum—including “Into Math.” They now own both the test that measures student performance AND the instructional materials that claim to improve it.

The integration is explicit. HMH now uses MAP data for “automatic placement” into HMH products like Read 180, Math 180, and Waggle. The assessment company owns the curriculum company. The test recommends the textbook.

When testing becomes profitable, whose interests does it serve?

The Numbers

The business of MAP testing is substantial:

  • Pricing: $13.50 per student per year for Reading and Math; $2.50 more for Science
  • Scale: 7+ million students tested annually across 50,000+ schools
  • Market reach: Used in 149 countries
  • State spending: Nevada alone spent $7.5 million on MAP between 2008-2012

For a district the size of Oak Park (roughly 5,500 students), annual MAP costs would run approximately $75,000-85,000—not counting the instructional time consumed by test administration.

The Ongoing Concerns

The Seattle boycott was over a decade ago. The IES study is even older. Has anything changed?

Some things have. NWEA has updated its algorithms, re-normed its scales, and responded to some technical criticisms. The 2025 norms reflect post-pandemic achievement shifts.

But the fundamental concerns remain:

Ceiling effects: NWEA itself acknowledges that “MAP is not intended to give precise measures of progress in high-achieving students.” For gifted identification and acceleration decisions, this is a critical limitation.

Motivation problems: MAP is a low-stakes test for students. Their scores don’t affect grades or graduation. Some students “do not take it seriously,” and results may reflect “how much students feel like humoring the system on that particular day” rather than actual ability.

Curriculum alignment: The test may not match what’s being taught, especially for students learning above grade level.

Predictive validity questions: One researcher compared MAP’s predictive power to state assessments and found it “only slightly more predictive than rolling dice.”

Why This Matters for Oak Park

Despite all of this—the boycotts, the ethics violations, the federal study showing no impact, the for-profit conversion—Oak Park District 97 has used MAP scores as a primary component of its math acceleration rubric.

A student’s RIT score (the metric MAP produces) could be worth up to 7 points on the acceleration rubric—the highest weight of any single measure.

My daughter scored in the 99th percentile on MAP Math. She received the maximum 7 points.

It wasn’t enough. She was denied acceleration.

If the district truly trusted MAP, a 99th percentile score—performing at a level most students don’t reach until years later—should carry significant weight. Instead, it was just one hurdle among many, each adding another barrier that most students can’t clear.

The question isn’t whether MAP is a good test. The question is: if districts don’t trust it enough to make decisions based on its results, why are they using it at all?

Next in the series: The Beautiful Math — Despite its troubles, RIT scores rest on genuinely innovative psychometric design. Understanding how they work reveals both their strengths and their limits.

Sources:

This is part of an ongoing series documenting one family’s experience with gifted education acceleration in Oak Park Elementary School District 97.