The Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the Senate Hispanic Caucus and the House Black Caucus are throwing a “special hearing” to stoke backlash to the State Board of Education’s recasting of American history.
Brian Thevenot
Brian Thevenot was an education editor at the Tribune in 2009-10. Previously he spent a dozen years at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, most recently as special projects editor. As part of a team that covered the worst of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, Thevenot contributed multiple bylines to two winning entries for Pulitzer Prizes in breaking news and public service. His Katrina reporting also won the Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the News from Northwestern University, and the Medal of Valor from the National Association of Minority Media Executives. In 2009, an eight-part series Thevenot edited, chronicling the investigation into an all-too-routine murder of a New Orleans teenager, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. In 2005, just before Katrina, Thevenot spent a month reporting on Louisiana soldiers in Baghdad and produced a three-part deadline narrative about squad of soldiers hit by a deadly roadside bomb, which was a finalist for Livingston Award. In 2003, he won a National Headliner Award for education reporting for his 2002 five-part narrative tracking an eighth-grader's struggle to pass Louisiana’s high-stakes standardized test. Before joining the Times-Picayune, Thevenot worked as a suburban reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Oklahoma City, Thevenot has a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: Don McLeroy on Al Jazeera
From the Department of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Arab world’s favorite news source takes on the State Board of Education.
Posted in
Higher Education
“The School-to-Prison Pipeline”
A new report by Texas Appleseed spotlights two troubling trends: the high number and proportion of discretionary expulsions by school districts, often for low-level “persistent misbehavior,” and the disproportionate severity of discipline meted out to African-Americans.
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Public Education
TribBlog: Drop-Out Throw-Down!
Bill White and Rick Perry fought over the hotly contested high school drop-out rate on Tuesday. Is it 30 percent (White)? 10 percent (Perry)? Or, more likely, somewhere in between?
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Public Education
TribBlog: Katrina’s Exiles Thrived In Texas Schools [Updated]
More than five years after Katrina, a long-term Texas Education Agency study finds that Louisiana students in Texas schools — many who came from among the nation’s worst campuses — have generally thrived here.
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Public Education
The Textbook Myth
Despite all the handwringing about Texas’ influence on the textbook market nationally, it’s just not so, publishing insiders say. The state’s clout has been on the wane and will diminish more as technological advances and political shifts transform the industry.
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Public Education
TribBlog: California Shuns Texas Textbooks
A Golden State senator says our State Board of Education can put its conservative spin on U.S. history where the sun don’t shine.
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Public Education
TribBlog: SBOE vs. the Media
The State Board of Education accuses unnamed “media” of “erroneously” reporting its removal of Thomas Jefferson from state world history standards. Trouble is, the board statement is guilty of the same alleged lack of context, and it follows a pattern.
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Public Education
TribBlog: History with Chuck Norris!
“Don’t mess with Texas … textbooks,” Norris orders liberals.
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Public Education
TribBlog: Colbert on the State Board of “Edjukashun”
The Colbert Report joins the media fray over Texas history standards, joking “You see, Jefferson coined the term ‘separation of church and state.’ So Texas has coined the term, ‘separation of Jefferson and history.’”