Thirteen-year-old Alex Trevino decided to take a stand against the Texas STAR test: she opted out. She might be held back and not promoted with the rest of her class. She and her mother say she is willing to take the consequences.
Alex told 12News, “I feel that we are not learning anything that we can use in life, we’re taught to a test, nothing comes out of it.”
State officials say she is not allowed to refuse the test.
Her parents support her actions. Her mother said she is proud of her. Rebellion against unjust authority is a tradition in Texas. It also is a tradition in the United States. Our nation was born of a Revolution, led by men who pledged their lives to fight for independence.
Alex is not backing down. She has started a Facebook page called STAAR SOS to encourage others to take a stand. To her surprise in the first four hours that the page was up, it gained more than 9,000 followers.
Alex’s Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/STAAR-SOS-373783632791962/timeline/
One determined teen could spark an opt out movement in Texas.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fascism is alive and well in TX. This is the type of action that could take the opt-out movement to the Supreme Court.
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In support of her, here’s a 2011 video of Matt Damon recounting the story of how his rmother, a teacher, opted him out:
(2:45)
(2:45)
” … I did have a brush with standardized tests at one point. I remember my mom went to the principal’s office and said, ‘My kid ain’t takin’ that… It’s stupid. It won’t tell him anything, and it will just make him nervous.’ ”
watch the whole video… I was there in D.C. at the S.O.S. rally that day. Teachers were crying by the end of this speech.
So Alex, Matt Damn and millions of teachers and parents are with you.
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As a teacher and admin myself….I’ve always thought it absurd to have high stakes testing. These state tests were originally designed to be diagnostic tools to help schools identify were additional help was needed or where students were not performing at the level as compared to others in the state. Legislators have warped that original idea into something it was never intended to be. With the conservative push for school choice/charters, advocates pushed legislators and Congress to revise the laws to force this business style evaluation model on to schools with the eventual goal of forcing schools to close under the guise of ‘nonperformance’ when in reality schools only account for about 30% of a students performance with the other 70% being outside factors like their home life, socio-economic standing, lack of available services, and traumatic events. Yet none of these ever get factored into the process. I think it’s going to take a massive push back from parents and teachers to reform how schools operate, but it will never happen as long as the Bill Gates and Michelle Rhees of the education debate are dumping millions into discrediting public education.
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You can bet that Texa$ isn’t going to fund ANOTHER year of her education to make her repeat a grade. Can you see the fiscal DISASTER if thousands of students refuse the test? Another scare tactic. They need all the $$ they can get to pay for testing, not educating!
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For Alex:
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“I know what’s right, I got just one life”
You go girl!
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The article linked in the posting is quite short. Beautifully illustrates several realities.
*Note: typos in the below excerpts are in the original.
[start]
Alex’s parents fully support their daughter, saying the test is not a true assessment of a student’s knowledge. Her mom, Aubrey, fears that the STAAR actually limits learning. She said, “We are having our kids do standardized testing, learn to a test all year long. All to memorize something, basically if they can’t bark it back, they fail.”
…
Aubrey claims the STAAR test is not about education, it’s all about money, and she believes ti contributed to the recent corruption allegations at Beaumont Independent School District.
Aubrey told us, “Salaries are connected to the STAAR testing, if children do better, they get a raise, if they do not, they don’t”
[end]
1), The driving force behind the “new civil rights movement of our time” aka corporate education reform is $tudent $ucce$$ for the few at the expense of the many.
2), Campbell’s Law in action. Or as Charles Goodhart put it: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
3), Rheephorm is authoritarian and superficial, not authoritative and meaningful.
4), Rheephorm is, quite simply, mandating the dumbing down of the vast majority of students. Exactly why the “thought leaders” of the self-described “education reform” movement don’t impose on them and theirs what they sell as best practices for everyone else aka the vast majority. See this blog: “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Many thanks to the owner of this blog for a terrific posting.
And kudos to a 13-year-old that has more smarts about testing than all the heavyweights and chief enablers and enforcers of the rheephorm movement put together.
😎
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You-all should really read the Obama Administration people who leave the administration and go on to private sector consulting. It gives one a good sense of how closed the ed reform community is, how there was universal agreement on policies like testing and any dissent was dismissed.
This is the (former) Obama hire who designed RttT promoting the idea that the only people who could possibly object to RttT are “haves”.
“Is ed reform splitting Dems btwn progressive haves (opting out) & have nots (demanding better schls)?”
Got that? Opt outers are “haves” who are opposed to “better schools”. This is the former leader of the Obama Administration program that impacted just about every public school in the country. If you disagree with her prescriptions for US public schools you oppose “better schools”. Not a whole lot of room for debate there!
I don’t think dissenters get HIRED in DC, let alone listened to. It’s self-selecting and self-perpetuating. It’s interesting to read because it’s insular enough that THEY don’t hear how it sounds.
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Chiara:
Well and succinctly put.
And it’s not only self-selecting and self-perpetuating, it makes self-correction highly unlikely or impossible because, as you point out, they lack the elementary ability to hear how they sound to others—not to mention they don’t even hear others to begin with!
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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Excellent observations as usual. USDE has had an ideological stranglehold on all recipients of federal funds, including the national and regional research agencies and labs. Investigations by the inspector general have been met with “we will do better” replies, then business as usual with privileged access to policy-formation from Gates, Waltons, Broads, Harvards, Stanfords, and outfits like the Fordham Institute–pushers of reports that have no independent reviews.
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If you look at American history, whenever those in power have stopped listening to the people, their demise was eventual. One has to think about those in the Hoover administration before the New Deal swept them away. Furthermore, those in power like to invent what they think the other side believes in. Having spoke to many in the NY Opt Out movement, these suburban people do want everyone to have an equal education. They understand that the inner city schools will be first and they will be next if the test and punish movement is left unchecked.
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In CT, one test can not be used to keep a child from advancing. After a year of instruction, do they not know how this child is doing? Good for her!
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It was not “allowed” for a black woman to sit in the front of the bus. It was not “allowed” for a woman to enter the voting booth. It was not “allowed” for gays and lesbians to ask for rights which every heterosexual enjoyed. Good for Alex and her family for taking it to the man. She joins a courageous and powerful group of dissenters.
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I often think of this quote from Parker Palmer in his book Let Your LIfe Speak,
Where do people find the courage to live divided no more when they know they will be punished for it? The answer I have seen in the lives of people like Rosa Parks is simple: these people have transformed the notion of punishment itself. They have come to understand that no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.
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“Testing Irony”
She passed the test
By opting out
And proved her zest
For truth, no doubt
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