Fewer Textbooks could Help the School System's Financial Situation

[JamesATyler]

If public schools didn’t issue textbooks to every student we could probably afford to put a police department in every school. Seriously, schools should consider just having the books available in the classroom and having an online version for off campus. If you are too poor to have a computer or tablet at home then you can request the books the old fashioned way. For everyone else, have several copies in the library that can be checked out. They should just stop issuing homework assignments that require the book. That would save so much money, they could afford police or security, more teachers, facilities, higher teacher salaries, or whatever else and save a lot trees as well.

 

[Elf01]

A tablet loaded with the books each year would probably be cheaper than the cost of the books over time.

 

[JamesATyler]

i read the average cost of an elementary book is over 100 dollars.

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3750551

 

[Kathleen18]

That would save so much money, they could afford police or security, more teachers, facilities, higher teacher salaries, or whatever else and save a lot trees as well.

Ohhhh I see. In theory, perhaps.
But books are better for a child’s brain and eyesight. And what happens if that $100 textbook goes home and gets lost? Are you going to make the lower income student pay for it? Textbooks are used for as many years as possible and shared between classrooms. Then they can be recycled.
And what about the homeless child that does not have internet available? And you are going to embarrass that child in front of his classmates by having them check out a textbook from the library?

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Many public schools use those expensive textbooks for decades, or at the very least 5 or so years. In the 90’s my textbooks were from the 80’s. I know people in Americor who related that those impoverished schools–in the late 2010’s were still using books from the 70’s. In elementary school, friend’s daughter is using books that are about 5 years old, and that’s in a decently well off-district. My friend teaches in a private high school…the students have to buy books for class but all the teachers make a point to use older editions as much as possible so students can sell texts to eachother.

 

[Gertabelle]

We have very few textbooks in our elementary school. So much of the children’s work is done on Chromebooks (one for every student in our very low-income school) and worksheets or in spiral notebooks.

The textbooks we do have are used only at school, and we haven’t had new ones in many years.

At middle and high school levels, it is a different story. They must have textbooks because the material covered is far more complex and reading is essential to learning at that point (in elementary grades the focus is on learning to read, and learning to understand and assess the quality of what is read).

Textbook companies are absolutely in business to make money. Do you honestly think they aren’t seeing HUGE dollar signs everytime someone suggests using only digital copies of their books?

The companies save millions of dollars on publication and shipping costs. They charge school substantial licensing fees for all those downloads, and those fees have to be renewed year after year after year, unlike a textbook that can last for ten years or more.