The president announced he would ask Congress for an additional $1.35 billion for the Race to the Top education grant program — which Gov. Perry spurned last week — along with more flexibility in doling it out to individual districts. He also took a swipe at Texas.
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
Economy
The Tuition Time Bomb
It costs an average of 63 percent more to attend a four-year state school today than it did in 2003 — and that’s still not enough to keep pace with bulging university budgets. Some policy makers see the higher education business model on the cusp of collapse.
Posted in
Public Education
History Lessened
On day three of the State Board of Education’s social studies curriculum hearings, targets of the conservatives’ ire included Marcus Garvey, Clarence Darrow, and Ted Kennedy.
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: Don McLeroy in the Hizz
In the midst of the social studies curriculum revisions, the SBOE member and former chair kicks off a debate about, of all things, hip-hop.
Posted in
Public Education
Civil Civics
State Board of Education members played mostly nice with one another Thursday, as they added and subtracted historical figures to the social studies curriculum. In: the first Hispanic Texas Supreme Court justice, Tejanos who died at the Alamo, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Out: “Ma” Ferguson, Henry Cisneros, and Dolores Huerta.
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: SBOE = State Board of Editors
When the State Board of Education finally got to amending the social studies curriculum, members burrowed deeply into the weeds, holding extended debates over the parsing of seemingly innocuous phrases, like “citizens” vs. “good citizens.”
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: Amid Controversy, Texas Gets an ‘A’ for Standards
But Education Week gives state’s education system average marks in other categories, and a C+ overall.
Posted in
Public Education
The American History Wars
As the SBOE grinded through testimony on Wednesday over its controversial social studies standards, much of the debate teetered on two basic fulcrums: teaching vs. indoctrination and patriotism vs. realism.
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: “Diverse States of America”
The State Board of Education gets an earful on patriotism, multiculturalism and Sikhism as it hears public comment on social studies standards
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: Today’s SBOE History Hearings
As the state school board holds a public hearing on social studies standards today, expect a torrent of pent-up input from advocacy groups treading the familiar ground of God, race and patriotism.