Textbook funds: Education can’t be done on the cheap
Published December 20, 2013
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, December 19, 2013.
Public school funding cuts have hit an absurd level.
Teacher salaries have been nearly stagnant for five years. Teacher aides have been fired. Funds for classroom supplies are gone. And now we learn from the News & Observer of Raleigh that textbook funding has been cut so dramatically in recent years that children in some schools can’t bring their textbooks home at night.
Textbook funding has been cut by nearly 80 percent in the past four years, the paper reported, a process that started in 2009 with the big education cuts that the Democratic legislature instituted and continuing through two biennial budgets from the Republican-dominated assembly.
In 2008-09, schools were budgeted to receive $111.2 million from the state for textbooks. The next year, they received $2.5 million. Since then, Republican legislators have increased funding, but only to $23 million a year.
On a per student basis, the funding drop from 2008-09 to today means a decrease from $67.15 per student to $14.26. Textbooks are much more expensive than most books available at retail, running from $39 to $86 each, the paper reported.
Today’s $14.26 per student is not enough, obviously, to replace textbooks that are damaged, go out of date or are lost. And, to make matters worse, 80 percent of that $14.26 goes towards materials, such as workbooks, that must be replaced every year.
At the top of this editorial, we called the funding situation “absurd,” and here is why. At a time when North Carolina is not providing the funds to buy new textbooks, the state is also converting to a new curriculum. So our schools are teaching a new course of study with old books.
But wait, that’s not all. By 2017, the General Assembly has decreed, the state will transition to digital textbooks although legislators have provided no funds to pay for that change.
Education can’t be done on the cheap, but that is what the legislature is attempting right now. It’s time to buy new books and for legislators to pony up the money to do so.
December 20, 2013 at 7:47 am
TP Wohlford says:
Give me a number. A number that says, "No more excuses." A number that says, "No more guilt." A number. 'Cause otherwise, this sounds like yet another Educational Industrial Complex shakedown.
December 20, 2013 at 11:31 am
D S Huntley says:
Textbooks are possibly one of the least talked about yet serious problems resulting in excessive costs with the educational system in America, from K thru college. Constant revisions which sometimes only result in minimal changes in actual content (a paragraph here, a sentence there, etc.) cost millions. Yet these slight changes are meaningful only to the publishers...$$$! So stop this continuous rewrite of textbooks and use/reuse the same textbooks until they are complete outdated. That way, they can be used for decades rather than a year or two.
December 20, 2013 at 11:38 am
DS Huntley says:
Textbooks are one of the most serious, yet least talked about problems in the American educational system, from K thru college. Constant revisions which sometimes contain only a new paragraph here, a sentence change there, etc., result in textbooks being "outdated" and the cost is in the millions. The benefits ($$$) are minimal except for that of the publishers. Use and reuse textbooks until they are completely and truly outdated, which will probably be a decade or more rather than a year or two and it will save all of use tremendously.
January 1, 2014 at 5:19 pm
Tom Hauck says:
Can anyone explain why,in the 2012-13 school year, NC public schools paid the following average for elementary level math textbook -- $44.14 or a reading book cost $35.42 or a social studies textbook cost $39.38. Middle School reading textbooks cost $84.56 while a high school reading textbook costs $86.13 -- Other textbooks cost between $55.63 and $68.30.
Seems like a lot of money for a 1.4 million student school system.
Go to www.ncpublicschools.org and Facts and Figures 2012-13
