1. The first paragraph of a news article should answer the questions who, what, where and when. List the who, what, where and when of this news item. (NOTE: The remainder of a news article provides details on the why and/or how.)

2. a) What is an executive order?
b) Describe the executive orders President Obama signed on Tuesday.
c) CHALLENGE: How many executive orders has President Obama signed compared to Presidents Bush and Clinton?

3. Why did President Obama sign these executive orders?

4. How do Republicans respond to the President’s fight against pay disparity? Be specific.

5. a) What law was the Senate considering updating this week?
b) Ask a parent if he/she would care if co-workers knew how much he/she earned and to explain why or why not. [NOTE: Generally employees in government jobs make the same pay for the same work; employers in privately-owned companies have more leeway on how much they pay their employees, taking into account education, experience, skill, job performance…)

6. Read the “Background” below the questions. List the factors the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) takes into account when comparing the pay men and women earn for full time jobs.

7. What do you think of these mitigating factors when comparing men’s and women’s salaries? Do women really get paid less when they do the exact same job?
What is fair? Should people be paid differently for the amount of work experience they have, for the length of time they have been at a particular company, for working longer hours, etc. or should none of these factors matter? Explain your answers.

8. From a CNN report:

On a day when President Obama trumpeted support of strengthening equal pay laws, a question about pay disparity between male and female staffers within the White House seemed to catch the administration a bit off guard. An analysis…found that women staffers made about 88 cents on the dollar, compared with male staffers. (Female federal workers in the early years of the Obama administration had a median salary of nearly 93% of what their male colleagues earn…) And while that figure for female federal worker earnings was up from just over 83 percent in 1991, it doesn't exactly match the type of pay parity the White House was touting.

White House spokesman Jay Carney responded to reporters questions by saying they were working at it and “at the 88 cents that you cite, that is not a hundred, but it is better than the national average.”

What word(s) would you use to describe this explanation and the disparity of pay among White House staffers? Explain your answer.