I don't really have more than kneejerk thoughts. And I need to rant. So here goes:
- This idea remains pathetic regardless of whether whites or blacks are behind it. I understand that this idea has some support from blacks who want black educators to control the black education of their black students. Jeez, that's a great idea! And while we're at it, we should have black bus drivers driving black buses, and black salespeople controlling sales to black shoppers, and black Starbuckses serving (black) coffee to black coffee-drinkers, and...there's just unlimited potential here, folks.
- The very idea that people are going to learn better only around other people of their own race is very frustrating. The grains of truth in it - (1) that minorities sometimes have unique cultural issues that minority teachers/administrations may be better prepared to address and (2) that learning might be facilitated when racism distractions are eliminated - can (obviously) only be eliminated in the long-term by integration. This proposed back-to-the-future disadvantages everyone in the long-term; if all you deal with is "people like you" from a young age, it will be harder to see and deal with "others" as fellow members of the same community.
- It certainly is DARN convenient for all the white middle-to-upper-class "yay, keep those minorities away from us!" types who ACTUALLY provided the needed votes and support for this bill [see bolded text below for who got this bill passed], that there was one black face to plaster on this legislation. Emphasis on the "one" - since this progressive, 21st century state has a whopping total of ONE black state legislator. It remains an open question, then, whether blacks who do not favor segregation could be elected in Nebraska.
- Won't someone think of the Asians? Now, I understand that there are only 3 percent Asians in this student population, but if there's going to be black schools and Hispanic schools and white schools, then I maintain there should be Asian schools too. After all, however can Asians learn, if they do not get taken to Asian bus-stops by Asian parents, get on buses driven by Asian bus drivers, and head to their Asian schools in which they are taught by Asian teachers? I guess the Asian kids just won't be going to school, then. What's that, you say? They can go to the black schools and the white schools and the Hispanic schools? You mean they can learn with people who are a different race than they are?
What a radical idea! I wish we had thought of that before.OH WAIT.
[PS I understand that the calm, reasoned response is, "There's already a spot on the docket of the federal district court in Nebraska for this case." Yep, but the courts stepped in on this one forty+ years ago - the idea ["segregation is bad!"] should have caught on with the general population by now. Why are we still talking about this?]
New York Times wrote:OMAHA, April 14 — Ernie Chambers is Nebraska's only African-American state senator, a man who has fought for causes including the abolition of capital punishment and the end of apartheid in South Africa. A magazine writer once described him as the "angriest black man in Nebraska."
Ernie Chambers, the only African-American in the Nebraska Legislature, was a major force behind a law enacted this week that calls for dividing the Omaha school district into three districts defined largely by race.
He was also a driving force behind a measure passed by the Legislature on Thursday and signed into law by the governor that calls for dividing the Omaha public schools into three racially identifiable districts, one largely black, one white and one mostly Hispanic.
The law, which opponents are calling state-sponsored segregation, has thrown Nebraska into an uproar, prompting fierce debate about the value of integration versus what Mr. Chambers calls a desire by blacks to control a school district in which their children are a majority.
Civil rights scholars call the legislation the most blatant recent effort in the nation to create segregated school systems or, as in Omaha, to resegregate districts that had been integrated by court order. Omaha ran a mandatory busing program from 1976 to 1999.
"These efforts to resegregate schools by race keep popping up in various parts of the country," said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard, adding that such programs skate near or across the line of what is constitutionally permissible. "I hear about something like this every few months, but usually when districts hear the legal realities from civil rights lawyers, they tend to back off their plans."
Nebraska's attorney general, Jon Bruning, said in a letter to a state senator that preliminary scrutiny had led him to believe that the law could violate the federal Constitution's equal protection clause, and that he expected legal challenges.
The debate here began when the Omaha district, which educates most of the state's minority students, moved last June to absorb a string of largely white schools that were within the Omaha city limits but were controlled by suburban or independent districts.
"Multiple school districts in Omaha stratify our community," John J. Mackiel, the Omaha schools superintendent, said last year. "They create inequity, and they compromise the opportunity for a genuine sense of community."
Omaha school authorities and business leaders marketed the expansion under the slogan, "One City, One School District." The plan, the district said, would create a more equitable tax base and foster integration through magnet programs to be set up in largely white schools on Omaha's western edge that would attract minority students.
The district had no plans to renew busing, but some suburban parents feared that it might. The suburban districts rebelled, and the unicameral Legislature drew up a measure to blunt the district's expansion.
The bill contained provisions creating a "learning community" to include 11 school districts in the Omaha area operating with a common tax levy while maintaining current borders. It required districts to work together to promote voluntary integration.
But the legislation changed radically with a two-page amendment by Mr. Chambers that carved the Omaha schools into racially identifiable districts, a move he told his colleagues would allow black educators to control schools in black areas.
Nebraska's 49-member, nonpartisan Legislature approved the measure by a vote of 31 to 16, with Mr. Chambers's support and with the votes of 30 conservative lawmakers from affluent white suburbs and ranching counties with a visceral dislike of the Omaha school bureaucracy. Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican facing a tough primary fight, said he did not consider the measure segregationist and immediately signed it.
Dr. Mackiel, the Omaha superintendent, said the school board was "committed to protecting young people's constitutional rights."
"If that includes litigation, then that certainly is a consideration," Dr. Mackiel said.
Some of Nebraska's richest and most powerful residents have also questioned the legislation, including the billionaire investor Warren Buffett as well as David Sokol, the chief executive of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, which employs thousands in Nebraska and Iowa.
"This is going to make our state a laughingstock, and it's going to increase racial tensions and segregation," Mr. Sokol said in an interview.
The Omaha district has 46,700 students, 44 percent of them white, 32 percent black, 21 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian or Native American. The suburban systems that surround it range in size from the Millard Public School District, with about 20,000 students, 9 percent of whom are members of minorities, to the Bennington district, with 704 students, 4 percent of whom are members of minorities.
Parent reaction is divided. Darold Bauer, a professional fund-raiser who has three children in Millard schools, said he was pleased that the law had eliminated the threat of busing, although he said he was not thrilled about sharing a common tax levy with the Omaha schools.
"What this law does is protect the boundaries of my district," said Mr. Bauer, who is white. "All the districts in the area are now required to work together on an integration plan, and I'm fine with that, because my kids won't be bused."
Brenda J. Council, a prominent black lawyer whose niece and nephew attend Omaha's North High School, said of the law, "I'm adamantly opposed because it'll only institutionalize racial isolation."
Whether the law goes unchallenged is unclear. "We believe the state may face serious risk due to the potential constitutional problems," Attorney General Bruning said in his letter.
But Senator Chambers, a 68-year-old former barber who earned a law degree after his election to the Legislature in 1970, was unmoved. He lists his occupation as "defender of the downtrodden," and suggests that is precisely what he is doing.
"Several years ago I began discussing in my community the possibility of carving our area out of Omaha Public Schools and establishing a district over which we would have control," Mr. Chambers said during the debate on the floor of the Legislature. "My intent is not to have an exclusionary system, but we, meaning black people, whose children make up the vast majority of the student population, would control."
During an interview in his office, Mr. Chambers took time out to answer calls questioning the plan. He told several people bluntly that they were misinformed, but he remained polite.
"You call me anytime, whether you agree with me or not," he signed off one conversation.
He acknowledged that he had nursed a latent fury with the Omaha district since enduring the taunting of schoolmates during classroom readings of "Little Black Sambo" when he attended during the 1940's. He also accused the district of returning to segregated neighborhood schools when it ended busing in 1999, although no high school is more than 48 percent black.
Other black leaders in Omaha criticized the new law.
"This is a disaster," said Ben Gray, a television news producer and co-chairman of the African-American Achievement Council, a group of volunteers who mentor black students. "Throughout our time in America, we've had people who continuously fought for equality, and from Brown vs. Board of Education, we know that separate is not equal. We cannot go back to segregating our schools."
. Luckily the music department did very well at providing classes that taught us how to teach music while also requiring all the knowledge based classes...and the majority of my fellow students did seem to possess knowledge of the subject. I didn't see this so much in the general education students. I'm not so sure they had very many classes dealing with how to teach their subjects, especially math. Mostly it was geared toward reading. It's only my perception, but at least half of the people I took general education classes with didn't seem like they were going to be very good teachers...especially the atheletes. Here in Texas one can't just be a coach. You have to have a back up subject and many of them choose history or health. I don't think it's that helpful to require coaches to teach another subject as obviously, coaching is their passion and the thing they will most concentrate on (oops ended a sentence with a preposition. Sorry Prim! 
