Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Plan for Omaha Schools Raises Segregation Concerns, 06/05/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/omaha_6-05.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is segregation? What is desegregation?

2. What do you know about the law case Brown v. Board of Education?

3. How would you describe the diversity in your school district?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What significant law was recently passed in Nebraska?

The state of Nebraska has passed a law that would divide Omaha schools into racially identifiable districts: one prominently black, another mostly white and a third mostly Hispanic.

2. Who was behind the effort to create the law? What did this person argue?

The push to divide the school district was spearheaded by Nebraska's only black state lawmaker, Senator Ernie Chambers.

Chambers argued that giving minority parents control over mostly minority schools would give them a "stake in the education of the children who represent the future, they take an interest, they participate in making sure that the schools do as they should."

Chambers also argued that the law would not create any more racial or ethnic isolation than already exists in the city's schools.

3. According to the article, how is race an issue in Omaha?

The prevalence of many factories has attracted immigrants and created a large middle class, but a society still divided by race and class, according to Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

"You would detect, in almost any major city in the United States today, there's an undercurrent of racism. There's also an undercurrent of classism that goes on, and we don't want to talk about it a lot of the time, but it exists," Benjamin-Alvarado said in a May 31 NewsHour report.

4. How will the law work?

The new law which goes into effect in 2008, would divide the 46,000 student Omaha District into three separate districts based on existing neighborhoods, most of which are segregated.

Each of the districts would be led by its own school board elected by voters in that part of the city

5. Why does Ernie Chambers think this new law is necessary?

For Chambers, a former barber and civil rights leader, the idea is to let minority-led school boards run the schools that educate minority children since, he says, white-run schools have failed to improve black and Latino graduation rates and reduce dropouts nationwide.

"Omaha is already segregated residentially. The real issue is one of power. We believe that the people whose children attend schools ought to have local control over those schools, a concept very familiar with white people," he said in the NewsHour report.

6. What have critics said about the new law?

Critics argue that the new law constitutes state sanctioned segregation and will face many legal challenges.

Many fear the law will make Omaha live up to its old Indian name, which means "against the current."

"It's become the butt of late-night comedy shows, and it is pretty embarrassing," Sandy Jensen, president of the Omaha School Board, told the NewsHour.

7. What is the NAACP and what is their opinion of the new law?

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has filed a lawsuit against Nebraska's governor and state officers, charging the new law violates Brown v. Board of Education, which prohibited racial segregation of public education facilities.

Tommie Wilson, president of the Omaha branch of the NAACP told the NewsHour, the "NAACP opposes, opposes segregation. Separate is not equal, and that's what we want to make sure that you understand. We fought too hard for integration.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. After reading the article, what do you think about the new law? Would you support it? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning with clear examples.

2. What is "separate but equal"? Why is it a theme in American history?

3. What are the benefits of diversity in schools?

4. How diverse is your school? What factors do you think contribute to this level of diversity? Should it be improved? How would you do that?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.