One City, One School District, Divisible: Omaha’s Radical Experiment to Achieve Educational...

One City, One School District, Divisible: Omaha’s

Radical Experiment to Achieve Educational Equity

The Child in the American Culture, EDL 520-02

Ann T. Greene

Southern Connecticut State University

Abstract

In 2006, the sole black state senator of the Nebraska

legislature, Ernie Chambers, and the Chairman of its Education

Committee, Ron Raikes, proposed an amendment to a bill that

sought to reconfigure the state’s largest city, Omaha’s, public

school system. The principal legislation, LB 1024, approved by

the body and signed into law by Governor Dave Heineman created

the Learning Community, a multifaceted effort to address racial and

socioeconomic disparities in educational funding and achievement.

Amidst national attention and community uproar, the measure

passed. No sooner had that happened than the local chapter of

the NAACP and the Chicano Awareness Center filed suit in federal

and state courts. Almost a year later, galvanized by the

controversy and the societal fissures it exposed, both LB 1024

and the Chambers-Raikes amendment (AM 3142) were repealed,

replaced by another bill which established Omaha’s Learning

Community. With the advent of the new legislation the city

abandoned for once and for all race-based admission policies,

instead privileging class-based policies. A collaborative of 11

suburban districts and one urban school district were to raise

money for the schools under a redistributive system called the

common tax levy. This paper is an exploration of one city’s

struggle with the mandates stemming from Brown v. The Board of

Education. Omaha’s experience is instructive in exploring how equal

opportunity and educational parity are regarded 60 years after

Brown.

One City, One School District, DivisibleThe Child in the American Culture, EDL 520-02

Ann T. Greene

One City, One District, Divisible: Omaha’s Radical

Experiment to Achieve Educational Equity

Introduction

In 1891, with a legislative decision that can either be

deemed, with hindsight, prescient or unconstitutional, the

Nebraska State Legislature passed statute 79-409. This statute

stipulated that as Omaha expanded its borders, the Omaha Public

Schools (OPS) boundaries would also expand to be contiguous with

city boundaries. (Finnigan, 2014, p. 13) It was, and remains an

unusual law, and was the statutory basis for OPS’s attempt to

achieve educational equity in the city’s public schools in the

1990’s and 2000’s.

Omaha, Nebraska: A brief history of the city

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Omaha was founded in 1854; then as now it is the county seat

of Douglas County, and the state’s largest city. According to

the 2010 U.S. Census, Omaha’s population was approximately

409,000. It was projected that by 2013 the city would grow to

almost 435,000 residents. Famed since the 19th century for its

jobbing, meatpacking and processing, and transportation sectors,

the city attracted European and African-American migrants who

then settled in distinct ethnic and/or racial neighborhoods.

By the early 20th century there was a significant African-

American population that was politically organized enough to form

the first chapter of the NAACP west of the Mississippi River.

Like elsewhere in the U.S., Omaha practiced racial

discrimination, racism and terrorism against African-Americans.

The story of African-American existence in Omaha includes periods

of extreme racial strife culminating in lynchings and/or race

riots through the late 1960s. (Wikipedia: Omaha, Nebraska, 2014)

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Today, despite the presence of several Fortune 500 company

headquarters, and increasing economic prosperity, Omaha has some

of the highest rates of poverty for African-Americans, and more

recently arrived Central and South American immigrants.

The governing body of the state is a 49 member non-partisan,

i.e., open primary, unicameral legislature (often called the

Unicameral) where legislators can serve no more than 2

consecutive 2-year terms. (A legislator is eligible to serve

again if s/he runs and is elected after a 4 year hiatus.)

(Wikipedia: Nebraska Legislature, 2014)

Currently, the city’s 51,000 public school students are

served by the Omaha Public School District (OPS), which is

comprised of approximately 80 schools contained within Douglas

and Sarpy Counties. (Wikipedia: Omaha Public Schools, 2014). In

the 2013-2014 school year, the racial makeup of OPS is 31.4%

Caucasian, 25.7% black, 32.3% Hispanic, and 5.1% Native American

or Asian-American. (Omaha Public Schools, 2014)

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Integration, Desegregation and the Theory of Social and

Academic Capital

As a result of Brown v. the Board of Education Omaha had to grapple

with the issue educational equality. In the 1940’s and 1950’s

most public school students lived within the city’s central

school districts. These districts, as described by Finnegan et

al. were “demographically diverse, containing a substantial

proportion of both White and middle-class students …” (Finnigan,

2014). While not truly integrated, because students would be

segregated by race and class due to societal custom and school

policy, according to Finnegan et al. (Finnigan, 2014, p. 2) there

was a greater mix of all classes, ethnicities and races than what

we see today.

Social and Academic Capital

Much of the theory behind school integration is that it

allows disadvantaged minority students to acquire crucial social

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and academic capital needed to succeed in American life. This

thinking proceeds from the groundbreaking work of Kenneth B. and

Mamie P. Clark used in Brown v. Board of Education. Their doll

experiments demonstrated the pernicious impact to black children

of a segregated society, schools being but one facet of that.

In 1966, the sociologist James Coleman and a team of

academics and U.S. Office of Education researchers published The

Coleman Report. Drawing on the Supreme Court’s finding in Brown that

separate cannot be equal, Coleman and the others detailed the

evidence of significant segregation in public school in

enrollment and in teacher assignment (Coleman, 1966). In their

work, considered the most influential educational study ever,

Coleman et al. hypothesized that analogous to the effects of

family background on economic success, quality of schooling isn’t

merely a function of an individual’s background and abilities, or

his or her family or resources. It’s also a function of the

backgrounds of others. (Caldas & Bankston, 2005) There is a

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likelihood of an attorney having a parent or parents who were

attorneys; and the likelihood that said attorney attended good

schools with classmates who also had parents in high status

professions. Both are indicators that such a person will have a

prestigious, economically successful job. Coleman argues that

students from “socially and economically disadvantaged

backgrounds” were isolated from the mainstream, and that the

isolation would strongly reinforce sustaining an underclass. In

what could be described as a vicious circle, economically

disadvantaged students scarcely accrue the social or academic

capital necessary to become economically successful. The Coleman

Report served as the “bible” for achieving desegregation through

mandatory busing, school district rezoning and other practices.

(Caldas & Bankston, 2005)

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PLACEHOLDER PAGE FOR FIGURE 1

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Suburban Expansion and the Beginning of White and Middle-

Class Migration

The Omaha at the end of World War II was one of ethnic

neighborhoods, e.g., Greeks, Irish, and African-Americans, who

all populated the city in waves of immigration that began in the

19th and continued into the 20th century. Throughout the nation,

the potential for social capital provided by an expanding economy

and the GI Bill (with its preferential treatment for white

Americans in terms of housing and higher education), and the

accompanying fears of racial contamination led to the phenomena

of white and middle-class flight. African-Americans were

discriminated against using discriminatory lending practices, and

residential covenants. Postwar prosperity spurred white

migration (then flight) into the municipalities bordering the

western boundary of Omaha. In Omaha, this rapidly led to the

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development of largely white, middle-class suburban communities.

(Holme, Diem, & Mansfield, 2009)

Expansion of OPS boundary

As early as 1947 many of these communities formed an

independent school district, Westside Community Schools. And,

contrary to a half-century-old practice and state law, the

Nebraska legislature explicitly prohibited the OPS from annexing

this district. This led to the formation of an independent

school district that coincidentally had an overwhelmingly white

and middle-class student body. Furthermore, while the city

itself annexed suburban land in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the OPS

did not follow suit, although it was statutorily mandated to do

so. By the 1960’s resistance to OPS annexation had increased

over familiar issues of race and class. In a preemptive measure

one city, Millard, attempted to annex land in order to become too

large a city itself to be annexed into Omaha, and specifically

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into the OPS. Despite a 5-year battle, where the Supreme Court

declined to hear the Millard case and therefore allowing the

lower court’s ruling to stand that Omaha could annex Millard,

after all that the OPS did not invoke 79-409.

Because of a lack of public record, there is little evidence

as to the decision, although conventional wisdom is that the

desire of Millard and other suburbs to maintain segregated

schools had much to do with the OPS refusal to absorb those

districts. As the imperative to desegregate became imminent, OPS

created a politically expedient cordon sanitaire to keep suburbs such

as Millard out of the city’s school system. (Holme, Diem, &

Mansfield, 2009, pp. 2-3). As a result, as Omaha grew, its

school district did not, rendering itself a district with “less

land, fewer tax dollars, and fewer middle-class families” than

the city itself. (Finnigan, 2014, p. 13). By the mid-1970’s

OPS’s census was steadily declining. More and more white,

middle-class families were moving out of the OPS’s boundaries

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into new suburban communities; consequently the numbers of white

students in the OPS steadily declined.

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Mandatory Busing

The inner city, now more African-American, grew poorer.

Meanwhile the newer suburbs on the city’s western edge grew

“whiter” and more affluent. As the city became more balkanized

it became harder for schools to even attain a semblance of

integration. By the 1970’s this meant that because of property

value differences, schools in more affluent neighborhoods were

far better resourced than schools in the OPS district. In the

recollection of one African American man who attended Omaha’s

public schools back then, A’Jamal-Rashad Byndon said, “I was

shocked … It was like a different school district.” (Pesek,

2004)

In the mid-1970’s Omaha began busing to if not integrate, at

least desegregate the public schools. Unlike Boston’s efforts,

which made international news because of the riots and

opposition, Omaha’s effort at busing to provide educational

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opportunity and equity for minority students was relatively

uncontroversial. In fact, one public school teacher working at

that time, Linda Placzek, described the transformative impact of

busing to integrate in highly laudatory terms. She claimed that

the policy was successful and remained so until it was

discontinued in 1999. (Pesek, 2004)

Nevertheless, Omaha’s public schools continued to grow more

segregated both racially and economically. There were many

reasons to abandon busing, not the least of which is that

desegregation as a cultural ideal no longer had much currency.

Part of the change of thinking undoubtedly came from the systemic

failure to integrate American society; and challenges to the work

of Coleman et al regarding the necessity of integration to

increase social capital for minorities. By the 1990’s and 2000’s

there was a decided shift away from school choice to achieve

racial integration, and more towards competitiveness and ranking

by standardized testing. Additionally, market-based ideas such

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as charter schools and vouchers became ascendant. For half a

century state and federal regulation had mandated public school

desegregation, but that became far less important (or even

desirable). (Wells, 2014, pp. 8-9) School choice meant freedom

for families to ignore the greater societal mandate of

integration. So much so that educational equity no longer was

synonymous with diverse racial and socio-economic student bodies;

educational equity, for many families could mean racially

segregated but nearby schools with significant parental control.

Whatever the reasons in Omaha, by the early 2000's Omaha’s civic

leaders and legislators had turned their attention to class-based

inequality and legislation began to be proposed to achieve

educational equity by means others than busing.

By 1984 the court declared that OPS was “unitary”, a term

meaning that schools are no longer segregated through any action of the

school system (emphasis mine) (Gamoran & Long, 2006). By judicial

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definition then, the Omaha public schools were essentially free

of the taint of “separate but equal.”

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Option Enrollment

Despite having cleared that hurdle, OPS continued to use

busing to desegregate its school until 1999 in addition to its

option enrollment policy which allowed any OPS student to transfer

between school districts. Option enrollment was a concession to

the demographic realities of the region; it was a way to achieve

some racial balance in a school system were residential housing

was highly segregated. This policy, in part designed to attract

and retain white and middle-class students in the OPS system was

supplanted when court-ordered busing ended.

The policy had the unintended consequence of serving as an

“escape hatch” for white, high achieving and gifted OPS students.

(Holme, Diem, & Mansfield, 2009, p. 4) What had been an attempt

to diversify the school district led to further segregation both

by race and by class.

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The Central City Becomes Poorer and More Homogenously

Minority

At the same time that option enrollment increased OPS’s

segregated schooling, the district was faced with the

consequences of not having applied 79-409 in order to grow its

tax base. As the city itself grew, OPS remained fixed in size,

and therefore unable to take advantage of tax revenues from more

highly valued real estate. OPS faced a double-whammy of lesser-

valued city real estate, and a development-friendly tax structure

which reduced commercial taxes and led to loss of revenue. Nor

did the Unicameral privilege the city: with the imposed taxing

and spending lids, OPS was further hamstrung financially. OPS

was delayed in receiving compensation for the students who are

most expensive to educate, e.g., high-poverty students or English

language learners. The district was compelled to “pay up front”

the costs of educating them. (Holme, Diem, & Mansfield, 2009, p.

4) By 2003, the financially-straitened district brought suit in

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court to challenge Nebraska’s school financing system, in an

effort to obtain more funding to educate an increasingly poorer

student body.

Creation of “One City, One School District” and the Learning

Community

In 2002 after continuous battles with suburbs such as

Millard and Elkhorn resisting being annexed into OPS, and

unsuccessful efforts by state legislators to repeal 79-409, OPS

voted unanimously to invoke the statute in a resolution called,

“Once City, One District” (OCOSD). OPS resolved to annex almost

20 suburban schools embedded in two districts. The intentions

were to settle the frequent disputes between suburban districts

and OPS over use of 79-409, to advance school integration, and to

give OPS statutory power of taxation in order to adequately serve

its student population. Despite contentious public opposition by

the western suburbs and their educational administrations, the

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superintendents of the very same suburban districts that were

threatened – Westside, Elkhorn, Millard and Ralston – were

privately engaged in negotiations with the legislature,

particularly Ron Raikes, a proponent of integration and Chair of

the Education Committee. From those meetings a proposal was

floated where OPS’ boundaries would be frozen and a common levy

was devised. The purpose of the levy, unlike any other reform to

achieve educational equity, was to redistribute the relative

financial advantage of the suburbs to the poorer city.

Additionally, legislation was proposed to encourage socio-

economic diversity in student bodies by the creation of focus

programs, focus schools, and regional magnet schools. In exchange for

the common tax levy, the focus school concept, and an 11 district

governing body, OPS’s boundaries were frozen, thereby nullifying

the application of the 1891 law. (Holme, Diem, & Mansfield,

2009, p. 7)

Major aspects of the proposed OCOSD were:

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1. The Learning Community was to be governed by a 21-member

board consisted of 18 voting members elected from sub-

districts, via school board vote, and three non-voting

members chosen by area school boards. The area

superintendents of the annexed suburbs serve as

advisory non-voting members.

2. Creation of an 11-district socioeconomic-based 2-way

transfer plan to foster diversity in all the schools

throughout Douglas and Sarpy counties,

3. The establishment of elementary learning centers (ELCs)

for academic and social support to children and

families. (Finnigan, 2014, pp. 14, 20)

4. Instead of option enrollment the Learning Community would

institute open enrollment, and

5. Most importantly, and most revolutionary was the

creation of a common levy plan whereas all schools –

those in affluent suburbs, and those in high-poverty

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neighborhoods – within the newly enlarged OPS would

receive a more equitable distribution of resources.

Even as this ambitious plan made its way through the

legislature there was a lone voice vehemently opposed to the bill

which was intended to set the terms of public school education in

Omaha for years to come. Ernie Chambers, then as now, was the

sole African-American State Senator (Dillon, 2006). In

negotiations with Education Chair Raikes, who tried to persuade

him to support LB 1024, Raikes suggested adding language that

would give local parents greater local control. For North

Omaha’s predominantly African-American population, that promised

more input in their children’s education. But Chambers was

skeptical, wanting nothing short of a specific school district

for the area. An iconoclast with black nationalist leanings, for

Chambers and many of his constituents, it wasn’t integration with

white suburbanites they wanted, but the possibility of community

control of the schools the majority of their children were

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attending. (Dillon, 2006) His argument was that minority-led

school boards should run schools that minority children attend,

adding that white-run schools nationwide haven’t improved

graduation rates nor drop-out rates for Black and Latino

students. (Public Broadcasting Service, 2006) Residential

racial segregation was an unassailable fact of life in Omaha, and

there was little or no political will or parental support to

resume busing to achieve integration in the schools. Raikes

offered to draft an amendment, AM 3142, proposing that Omaha be

organized as three schools districts.

The proposed amendment, depending on one’s point of view,

either reflected the reality of entrenched racial segregation in

Omaha or ushered in a new era of state-sanctioned segregation.

AM 3142 divided Omaha into three distinct school districts,

primarily distinguished by race and/or ethnicity. North Omaha, a

historically African-American community, would become the “black”

district; the south side, the “Latino or Hispanic” district; and

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the western district, the area of greatest concentration of both

whites and wealth, would be the “white” district. The districts

were to have “attendance areas which are contiguous and whose

student populations share a community of interest.” (Holme,

Diem, & Mansfield, 2009, p. 7). Senator Chambers argued that

long-standing (and he would argue half-hearted) efforts to

desegregate the city’s public schools had only served to diminish

opportunities for minority families to determine their children’s

destiny.

As for Raikes, his willingness to draft the amendment was a

concession to the political reality that without some legislation

at the tail end of the Unicameral’s 60 day working period there

would be no other remedies to address persistent inequity and

segregation. He wasn’t alone in his concern. OPS’ own attorney

worried that Omaha may be violating the 14th amendment by

resorting to de jure segregation and that courts would superimpose

legal remedies. He heard from suburban superintendents who cited

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Milliken v. Bradley; they believed their districts were insulated from

charges of conspiring to reinstate de facto segregation since their

school systems were not responsible for desegregation across

district lines. (Holme, Diem, & Mansfield, 2009) (Undoubtedly,

23 years of voluntary busing and option enrollment, regardless of

how it worked in execution, served as part of their rationales.)

The amendment, entitled the Chambers-Raikes Amendment, was

attached to LB 1024 which was signed into law (by Governor

Heineman who was facing a primary challenge) shortly thereafter.

As is befitting legislation that upends more than half a

century of legal precedent, LB 1024 was controversial. Since the

Supreme Court had decreed that segregation be abolished with “all

deliberate speed” no state had codified racially segregated

public education.

A few months after the amended LB 1024 was signed into law,

the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a briefing in Omaha

to “get a better understanding of the civil rights ramifications

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of the Chambers-Raikes amendment and its effects on minority and

non-minority students.” (US Commission on Civil Rights, 2006, p.

1) There had been opposition to the bill and amendment from

prominent civic and business leaders such as the Buffett family,

religious bodies and civil rights organizations. Testimony of

the panelists convened for the hearing encapsulate the

impassioned positions held.

State Senator Patrick Bourne argued that LB 1024 not only

created 3 race-based districts but multiple race-based districts.

By abolishing annexation of the fastest growing and wealthiest

areas of Omaha, the city would have a minority and poor central

city district and many white and affluent western districts.

Furthermore, he argued, the law eviscerates effective integration

efforts by 1) allowing schools to cap their enrollments (which

would be advantageous to the western districts) and 2) to bear

the transportation costs for every student who comes from outside

their district (a financial disincentive). Those and other

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factors effectively prohibit students attending anything but a

“home attendance area school.” Bourne testified that one of AM

3142’s purposes is to create a specifically “black” school

district, and that given the bill’s rules to determine districts

there was no way not to create racially segregated school

districts, and that high-poverty districts would continue to be

underfunded. He called the bill and amendment a “direct

contradiction to the principles of Brown v. Board of Education”. Other

panelists who opposed the legislation reiterated Bourne’s

essential points, and also stressed the point that the proposed

Learning Community meant that a central bureaucracy would have

control over the schools; not a local school board as envisioned

by State Senator Chambers. (US Commission on Civil Rights, 2006,

pp. 2-3, 5)

Of those who were in favor of the bill, such as Walter

Vincent Brooks, a media specialist for the University of Nebraska

Medical Center, much of their argument stemmed from the well-

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documented evidence that post-Brown public education with busing

and integration has not served minority children well. If

American society is to remain socially segregated, Brooks

asserted, then its school should remain segregated, too. The

notion that white parents believe that their children suffer from

not attending racially diverse schools or that white students’

educational development is significantly stunted if they don’t

have “meaningful interaction with students of color” is a

fiction. Sending minority children to schools and communities

where they are not welcome to receive an education is beside the

point. What is primarily important is that given the realities

of American life, LB 1024 makes it possible for local communities

to have more influence and autonomy on the administration of

local schools. (US Commission on Civil Rights, 2006, pp. 7-13)

Between the time the law was passed and the Commission’s

testimony was published LB 1024 was repealed. After the bill’s

passage OPS and western Superintendents continued negotiations

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and by the end of 2006 had proposed another bill that addressed

the issue of integration. That bill, LB 641 established the

Learning Community (LC). According to the Wikipedia entry about the

Omaha Public Schools (Wikipedia: Omaha Public Schools, 2014), the

LC consisted of all the school districts in the country where the

city is located. (Keep in mind that the City of Omaha’s

boundaries included the western suburbs whose school districts

were not a part of OPS.) Any county that shared a border with

the city was part of the LC. An additional bill, LB 1154,

modified the Learning Community’s implementation timeline; both

superseded LB 1024. The NAACP, the CAC and OPS all dropped their

lawsuits as a result of the new bills; the legislation was signed

into law by the Governor in 2007. Its important features

included:

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1. Freezing of the OPS boundaries (effectively nullifying

79-409) and creation of the Learning Community comprised

of OPS and 11 suburban districts,

2. Creation of a Learning Community Coordinating Council (LCCC) led

by elected and appointed members, with non-voting

school superintendents serving in an advisory role,

3. Instituting new and stronger class-based integration

provisions, e.g., creation of focus programs, focus schools

or magnet schools to promote racial diversity,

4. Modifying the finance structure to take into account

the needs of at-risk students, e.g., limited English

proficiency students or those needing education

resource centers to provide social and academic

support,

5. Creation of an 11-district socio-economic based

transfer plan to foster diversity in Douglas, Sarpy

(and parts of Washington) county schools, and

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6. A common levy was devised so that poor districts could

benefit from valuation increases in suburban districts.

(Holme, Diem, & Mansfield, 2009, p. 8) and (Finnigan, 2014,

p. 14)

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Conclusions

Seven years after the contentious and public enactment of

the Learning Community, many of the same issues in terms of

educational equity and funding still beset Omaha, and are still

major news. The Omaha World-Herald, the city’s major daily, has

been covering the story of desegregation and educational equity

for more than 20 years. It reports that open enrollment (to

achieve socio-economic diversity and improve achievement) has not

proved to work. Much of the blame for school districts not

collaborating on better solutions is placed on the plan’s most

radical innovation, the common tax levy (which went into effect

in 2010). As recently as October 2014 it was proposed that the

common levy be abolished in favor of increased state aid for

districts that serve poor and immigrant students, and that

transportation costs associated with the open enrollment transfer

program to promote socio-economic diversity not be paid out of

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state aid to schools because it reduces what can be spent for

teaching. By agreement of 11 superintendents and OPS’s school

board abolition of common levy will likely happen in the upcoming

2015 term.

With the recent election of Republican Pete Ricketts to the

governorship, the Learning Community itself, not just the common

levy is imperiled. In a recent interview the Governor-Elect

asserted that he favored eliminating it altogether. He speaks of

cost-cutting measures and the possibility that better educational

outcomes can be obtained without additional expenditures.

(Duggan & Stoddard, 2014) He is seconded in that assessment by

outgoing Governor Heineman who signed the original legislation.

Many of the underlying societal inequities that were

addressed in Brown have persisted. The cities and their public

schools are highly segregated, and the children educated in many

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central city schools have high social needs. What Omaha tried

was a radical experiment to comply with the law, and forestall

making permanent the secession of the affluent suburbs from the

life and fate of the central city. Its principal lever, the

common tax levy, while never popular, became increasingly

unpopular as even affluent communities felt the impact of the

2008 recession. Not only have many suburban communities suffered

revenue losses under the levy’s formula, the OPS schools are

still not sufficiently funded to serve high needs students. The

demographic landscape of Omaha had changed – with increasing

Hispanic immigration and the further impoverishment of the

already-poor inner-city resident.

The language of integration and equal opportunity has fallen

on deaf ears raised on a cultural and political discourse that

ignores the existence of and lived reality of the poor. Is it

any wonder that already disparate communities with little or no

common bonds would continue to resist costly (in terms of time,

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money, and harm to one’s children) attempts to educate everyone’s

child? This was Omaha’s dilemma, and it is our own. After less

than a decade, Omaha’s impending abolition of an imperfectly

resourced Learning Community is a harbinger of things to come

throughout the nation.

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Annotated Bibliography

Caldas, S. J., & Bankston, C. L. (2005). Forced to Fail: The Paradox of

School Desegregation (1st paperback ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield Education.

In Chapter 1, "School Desegregation: A Policy in Crisis",

Caldas and Bankston challenge the enduring prescriptions of

The Coleman Report by hypothesizing that contemporary racial

resegregation stems from fundamental misunderstandings of

self-interest and resistance to what they deem

redistributive planning.

This chapter was useful is adding a nuanced examination of

the long-term consequences of desegregation as practiced in

the U.S. However, and I would guess that their work is

situated in the libertarian/conversative wing of educational

policy studies, I feel they ignore some structural issues

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that set the stage for disadvantage. Their writing on the

evolution of thinking that led to desegration is insightful

as well as provocative.

Coleman, J. (1966). Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington:

National Center for Educational Statistics.

The Report was a requirement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,

to survey and report to the President and Congress about

"the lack of availability of equal educational

opportunities" based on race, color, religion, nationality

in the U.S. and its territories. Sociologist James S.

Coleman lead a team of academic and U.S. Department of

Education researchers to address four questions: 1) the

extent of public school segregation, 2) whether schools

offer equal educational opportunity based on a multitude of

criteria, 3) student learning as measured by standardized

testing, and 4) if there are relationships between student

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achievement and the schools students attend. The

researchers found that the majority of public school

students attended schools with not only segregated

classrooms, but segregated faculty. Through the strenuous

accumulation of data on school environments, student

achievement, higher education, case studies of school

integration, and analysis of Head Start, school guidance and

vocational education, the researchers created a

comprehensive and surprising picture of the then current

state of American education in terms of equal opportunity.

The Coleman Report was and is vastly influential and its

findings are still used by people on all sides of the debate

on equal opportunity.

Dillon, S. (2006, April 15). New York Times. Retrieved from

nytimes.com:

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/us/15omaha.html?

pagewanted=all&_r=0

This article, written by New York Times journalist Sam Dillon,

profiles Ernie Chambers who spearheaded the law that created

3 race-based school districts in Omaha, Nebraska. He has

served for decades as Nebraska's sole African-American state

legislator and sees his job as the "defender of the

downtrodden". Chambers doesn't shy away from controversy or

contentious debate when he is championing an issue. Dillon

implies that some of the impetus for the amendment comes

from Chambers's devastating experiences with racism as a

school child.

Duggan, J., & Stoddard, M. (2014, November 13). Retrieved from

Omaha.com: http://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/heineman-

ricketts-say-lawmakers-should-consider-scrapping-learning-

community/article_4ce477e8-6a91-11e4-91ce-73d9a7c3f718.html

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Ann T. Greene

Right after the release of a report created by 11

metropolitan Omaha school superintendents, and seconded by

the OPS board, the newly elected incoming Governor, Pete

Ricketts, went on the record to state that he favored

elimination of the LC altogether. He was non-committal

about increasing state aid to Omaha's schools (which was one

of the report's recommendations). This announcement, prior

to assuming office, and only seven years after the LC

implementation has serious political implications for the

survival of the program.

Finnigan, K. S. (2014). Regional Educational Policy Analysis:

Rochester, Omaha, and Minneapolis' Inter-District

Arrangements. Educational Policy, 1-35, 2.

Finnigan et al. studied regional educational policy by doing

a comparative analysis of three metropolitan agreements in

Rochester, MN, Omaha, NE and Minneapolis, MN. Across the

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Ann T. Greene

three sites they conducted 60 in-depth interviews, and then

shared their findings with each city's team to gain further

perspectives on the similarities and differences between the

cities.

This paper was invaluable in getting a technical

understanding of the scope and complexity of Omaha's Learning

Community (LC). The researchers deeply explored the political

ramifications of the LC's governance structure; the

relationship between district superintendents and OPS, the

development of magnet schools, the 2-way transfer policy and

of costs such as transportation .

Gamoran, A., & Long, D. A. (2006). Equality of Edcational Opportunity: A

40-Year Retrospective. School of Education, University of

Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Madison: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

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Ann T. Greene

Gamoran and Long, both sociologists, write about the

enduring influence of the Coleman Report (CR) and how its

findings have fueled decades of research on the relationship

between SES and achievement, racial and ethnic disparities

in achievement and other issues. They focused on four

aspects of the Report's impact: 1) a re-examination of the

findings compared to current research and changing times, 2)

the debate over whether CR's findings hold internationally,

3) implications of CR and subsequent studies by Coleman as

it pertains to school choice and vouchers, and 4) changes in

concepts of equality of educational opportunity. Lastly,

the authors comment on the implications of CR and school

effects research as it pertains to equal educational

opportunity.

This paper was useful to me in understanding the concepts of

a school system being classifed as "dual" or "unitary" and

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Ann T. Greene

how that was significant in Omaha's desegregation efforts.

Holme, J. J., Diem, S., & Mansfield, K. C. (2009). Using Regional

Coalitions to Address Socioeconomic Isolation: A Case Study of the Omaha

Metropolitan Agreement. Case Study, Charles Hamilton Houston

Institute for Race and Justice, Cambridge.

Holme et al. have written a deeply researched case study of

the arc of Omaha's desegregation process. They explicate

the history of its social and political precursors -- the

development of the western suburbs, the impoverishment of

the city, the roles of the major newspaper, the Omaha World-

Herald, and important civic, business and philanthropic

leaders, court-ordered busing, the political battles over

One City, One School District, LB 1024, AM 3142 and subsequent bills,

and the authorizing legislation that created the common levy

and the Learning Community (LC).

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Ann T. Greene

Given the current political climate, it will be fascinating

to read any updates on this invaluable study.

Omaha Public Schools. (2014). Omaha Public Schools: Statistical Reports.

Retrieved from district.ops.org:

http://district.ops.org/Portals/0/RESEARCH/Docs/Statistical

%20Reports/MembershipEthnicity/2013-14%20Official%20Fall

%20Membership.pdf

This is a table of OPS's District Race/Ethnicity History, beginning in

the 2004-2005 academic year to the 2013-14 academic year.

A cursory examination shows the following in the 10 year

period from 2004 - 2014: 1) Hispanic student population has

grown from 19.6% to 32.3%, 2) African-American student

population has decreased from 31.3% to 25.7%, and 3)

Caucasian student population has decreased from 46.0% to

31.4%.

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Ann T. Greene

Pesek, C. (2004, May 14). Segregation creeps back into Omaha Public

Schools. Retrieved from JournalStar.com:

http://journalstar.com/news/local/segregation-creeps-back-

into-omaha-public-schools/article_28c26e39-886e-5ce2-814c-

d029cd748236.html

This is an article which examines the era of court-ordered

busing through the eyes of 2 participants -- a man who went

to both segregated and desegregated Omaha schools and a

woman who was teaching in the system during this era. Both

have remained engaged in Omaha education. A'jamal-Rashad

Byndon, whose mother, Lerlene Johnson, was a leader in

efforts to desegregate the school system, became a community

organizer and is now a community consultant. Linda Placzek,

now retired as a principal, is a volunteer reading

specialist.

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Ann T. Greene

Public Broadcasting Service. (2006, May 31). PBS Newshour.

Retrieved from pbs.org:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education-jan-june06-

omaha_05-31/

Newshour correspondent Spencer Michels interviews State

Senator Ernie Chambers, Omaha School Board President Sandy

Jensen, State Senator and Education Chair Ron Raikes, Tony

Gunter, an elementary school principal, Jonathan Benjamin-

Alvarado, a political science professor, Tommie Wilson,

President of the Omaha NAACP and various OPS students on the

genesis and implications of bill LB 1024 and AM 3142.

US Commission on Civil Rights. (2006, September). Omaha Public

Schools Issues and Implication of Nebraska Legislative Bill 1024. Retrieved

from www.usccr.gov/pubs/OmahaFinal.pdf

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Ann T. Greene

This collection is the testimony of seven of the 10

panelists who spoke at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

briefing on LB 1024. It is an excellent source of community

perspectives of the issues at stake during the bill's

debate.

Reading the testimonies as a whole you read arguments based

on social justice, the unfinished mandates of Brown v. Board of

Education, the long history of African-American self-reliance,

the need to prepare American students for a diverse

globalized world, the traumas endured because of racist

practices in schools, the imperative for community control

of schools, and the impact of the law on the district's

contractual obligations.

Wells, A. (2014). Seeing Past the "Colorblind" Myth of Educational Policy.

School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder.

Boulder: National Education Policy Center.

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Ann T. Greene

This paper examines some of the psycho-social factors that

enter into considerations of school choice and the interplay

between those factors and and real estate. It also address

differences in market-based and deliberate educational

policies and their impacts on socio-economic and racial

diversity. While she advocates that policymakers play a

leadership role in constructing a more diverse society, she

is aware that changing racial attitudes in the US make this

a more challenging goal. Yet, she thinks it not only

essential, but possible.

Wells's work can be seen as a response to the work of Caldas

and Bankston. I used this paper as background on the larger

cultural changes and migration patterns that influence

changing definitions of equal opportunity.

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Ann T. Greene

Wikipedia: Nebraska Legislature. (2014, November 17). Nebraska

Legislature. Retrieved November 23, 2014, from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Legislature

This was an encyclopedic entry explaining the history,

composition and operations of the Nebraska legislature.

Wikipedia: Omaha Public Schools. (2014, November 20). Omaha Public

Schools. Retrieved from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Public_Schools

This was an encyclopedic entry explaining the demographics

of OPS. It also synopsizes the controversies surrounding

One City, One School District and LB 1024 and AM 3142.

Wikipedia: Omaha, Nebraska. (2014, November 5). Omaha, Nebraska.

Retrieved from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha,_Nebraska

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Ann T. Greene

This was an encyclopedic entry about the city's founding,

commerce, geography and demographics from 1854 to the

present.

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