Theresa Valls Trevino

Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment, Austin, TX

Theresa Valls Trevino, M.D. hails from a family who has been in Texas for 6 generations. Born in Corpus Christi, TX, she grew up in El Paso and graduated from El Paso public schools. She graduated from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio in 1985 with Highest Honors and went on to receive her Medical Degree from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989. She did her post-graduate medical training in Psychiatry, with a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital in Dallas, TX, and received Certifications in both Adult and Child Psychiatry. She was a staff psychiatrist for the Dallas Child Guidance Clinic, serving the most severely abused children under the care of the Texas Department of Protective Services. She had private practices in San Antonio and Austin, where she was actively involved in her patients’ school needs by attending ARD meetings and other school consultations on a regular basis.

She retired from her private practice and became involved in children’s advocacy. In 2012, she was a founding member of Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA), a statewide grassroots group of parents, students and the community who wished to improve public education by utilizing more meaningful student assessments. TAMSA had active participation in the passage of HB 5 in 2013, which reduced the number of STAAR EOCs from 15 to 5. In 2015, she was a gubernatorial appointee to the Texas Commission on Next Generation of Assessment and Accountability. TAMSA has been involved in aiding the passage of the Individual Graduation Committees and legislation to reduce the impact of testing on children and the state accountability system. She and her husband, Dr. Ken Trevino, have two children who attended public schools in Austin ISD, graduated from college, and are in the workforce.