AUSTIN, TEXAS, February 23 — Over 2,000 angry parents, teachers, students and community members rallied today, demanding an end to STAAR (the state’s latest standardized testing scheme) and to fight the $5.4 billion cuts in education.
The crowd this year was angrier and more militant than in the past. The rage could be felt as the multiracial mass led by two all-black marching bands strode up the main downtown avenue toward the capitol. Liberal misleaders of the march led chants of “Si se puede” (“yes, we can”) and “Save our schools.” PL’ers, joining in with rank-and-file students and teachers, led militant slogans: “The banks got bailed out, schools got sold out!” and “Up, up with education, down, down with deportations.”
At the rally speaker after speaker condemned STAAR. Signs in the crowd called on parents to openly defy the exam by opting their children out of taking it. Thousands read a student leaflet exposing the billions paid to the testing company Pearson to create and administer the new state exam. With these developments there is a potential to win thousands of students, parents and teachers to PLP’s communist ideas.
Out of School into Prison or the Army
While the STAAR exam threatens all Texas students, the impact it is having and will continue to have on working-class mainly black and Latino students is devastating. The latest STAAR results have shown that the lowest scores occur in the poorest schools. The reality is that thousands of these black and Latino students will be pushed out of school and into the prisons or the army, serving as cannon fodder for the next imperialist war. This fact reveals the truly racist nature of the standardized testing movement.
Two black students spoke about a struggle in their mainly black high school to stop a charter school takeover. One of the youth described how he regularly attends school board meetings where he attacks the board for their compliance with the charter school. Thousands cheered this sophomore’s actions, which were a sharp contrast to the empty platitudes of the school bosses who were invited to speak.
Several superintendents and board presidents spoke out in opposition to the cuts and the testing-mania. But there is true hypocrisy when the very people who implement the cuts on a local level claim to be leading the fight against them. These school bosses are as much to blame for the cuts as the politicians they condemn. Pearson bosses and the servants of capitalism in the government rely on the compliance of these school boards and superintendents to maintain their capitalist system.
The overarching theme of the rally was to blame “greedy” and “incompetent” Republicans and companies like Pearson for the problems in education. The cuts are actually caused by a capitalist system in crisis, one both Democrats and Republicans are attempting to “cure” off the backs of working-class youth. In reality, the liberal rulers pose a higher threat to the working class, as they are better able to pacify and trick workers. The rally called for everyone to vote for “pro-education” Democrats.
PL’ers called to “vote with your feet” toward revolution. Hundreds of leaflets and CHALLENGEs were distributed, calling for communist revolution as the only solution to the problems of education. People were very receptive to PLP’s ideas and we plan to intensify our CHALLENGE sales at future events.
Tie Budget Cuts, Tests to Capitalism’s Racism
There is much potential for the Party’s ideas to grow in the fight against budget cuts and standardized testing. The line of the liberal misleadership to vote for change has a strong appeal in a period where many see no alternatives to capitalism. We must be vigilant in connecting the budget cuts in education and the standardized testing movement to the racism inherent under capitalism. And we must continue to put forward a sharp line of  class-conscious anti-racism and
anti-sexism in these movements. It is around these ideas that we will win thousands to PLP and expand the fight for equal education to a fight for communism!