School Suspends Student for Writing YOLO on Test, Tweeting It to School Officials
"I was being a high school kid getting on Twitter," Texas high school student Kyron Birdine said in his defense after being suspended for tweeting out a photo of a state-mandated standardized test with the acronym YOLO (You Only Live Once) and a smiley face emoticon scratched across the essay portion.
Of course, his four-day on-campus suspension might have also had something to do with the fact that Kyron, an Arlington High School junior, made sure to forward the tweet to school district officials and the Texas Education Agency.
But, much as his use of YOLO would indicate, Kyron remains a boy with no regrets.
As the Dallas Observer notes, Kyron and his classmates are being forced to take both the new State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test and the old Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test, even though only the TAKS will count.
"He and any other Texas students who entered ninth grade before the 2011-12 school year are still evaluated on the TAKS test," the Observer explains. "They're still required to take the STAAR, but mainly so the state can get data they can use to tweak the test before it really matters."
"It wasn't for a grade," Kyron told WFAA's News 8. "Colleges don't see it. It didn't benefit my personal life at all."
Kyron's mother believes her son's punishment was "excessive," telling a reporter suspensions should be reserved "for something really severe."
But Arlington ISD said in a statement that it punished Kyron "in accordance with district disciplinary procedures."
Kyron told News 8 he wouldn't do it again, but apparently that restraint need not apply to other STAAR-takers, whom Kyron has been encouraging to engage in the same passive-aggressive protest that got him suspended.
"Anyone taking the staar test just write YOLO on it," Kyron tweeted, "and hash tag #FreeKyron."
