Who Should Control School Funding?

Throughout the United States, a battle has been raging over school funding and reform for decades—but the Great Recession has opened a new dimension in the struggle.

Cash-strapped states have been slashing school funding year after year, continuing an effort begun by “small government” forces, now joined by “deficit hawks.” Recently, every new legislative session brings another epic battle, in which it seems the best a district can hope for is not to lose as much ground as last year.

Blue Valley West High School is in an affluent suburb of
Johnson County, KS, where school patrons are willing to tax
themselves sacrificially if necessary, to fund their schools.

All the same, some localities—such as Johnson County, KS, where I live—have resisted this trend as fiercely as they can. Johnson Countians have a long history of repeatedly raising their own taxes—even during the current economic situation—to strengthen funding for our schools. We’re lucky we can afford to do this, because not all districts are able.

We understandably resent and resist any effort to hold us back from more fully funding our schools—yet this is exactly how funding disparities widen between “have” and “have not” schools. When public schools were being set up in the 19^th century, the norms of the day and primitive communications led to the natural outcome that schools were funded by local property taxes, and governed locally. And it has stayed that way.

Unfortunately, we now have such an inequitable system that it probably should be ruled unconstitutional. 

Yet Heaven help anyone today who dares to suggest that US school funding should not be sourced and controlled locally! That is especially true in a relatively affluent area where parents clearly understand the value of a good education, but don’t necessarily trust centralized government to make good school decisions!

Educational innovations such as those practiced at this
school for 7-to-16-year-olds in Espoo, Finland, are proving
difficult to "transfer" to the United States.

This presents a real conundrum for reformers, because pretty much all of the countries with students scoring better than ours seem to be run on centralized systems. 

In top-rated Finland, for example, a central government agency controls the schools, mandates a centralized curriculum and educational approach; funds all schools, regardless of neighborhood, at relatively generous and equitable levels; and pays (not to mention respects) teachers more highly than in the US. How do we apply successful methods from the rest of the world, without changing this "central" aspect?

Indeed, for jealously protective parents who don’t want “outside bureaucrats” meddling with their kids’ schools, the reaction has often been the exact opposite of greater centralization. 

Instead, the cry of “school choice!” has gone up in various districts. This has led to an explosion in the number of homeschoolers, charter schools, and an assortment of voucher systems since the early 1990s. More recently, it also has led to a rise in “virtual” school districts offering courses online.

This water-damaged school in Newark, NJ--with no funds for
repairs--provides a cautionary lesson about too much austerity. 

Some parents who seek greater school choice want to flee crumbling inner city districts, which they—often with justification—see as dangerous places with more focus on crowd control than on nurturing children’s learning. 

Some religiously observant parents fear secular influences may alienate their children from their faith. 

Others resist integration, or disagree with curriculum mandates, or dislike placing their children in a “class-based” system that demands all children must learn the same things, at the same ages, and on the same timetable, no matter what their gifting or challenges may be.

Not all motivations are equally high-minded, but nearly all of those listed above spring from parental concern over what, how, and under what conditions their children are being taught. Parental concerns and a deep American respect for individuality are part of the forces that keep the "centralizers" at bay.

They are not the only interests that must be considered in reform efforts, however. 

Also influential in decisions made at all levels are the business interests of large companies in what has come to be called the "education-industrial complex" (test publishers and scorers, textbook and educational materials publishers, for-profit school management corporations, and many others have increasingly profited from contracts to provide school products and services).

Add to them the extremely well-funded ideologues who have begun to play such a massive role in US politics, and the politicians who depend on them for never-ending campaign financing needs. 

There also are numerous philanthropic foundations, academics, writers, think-tanks, teachers' unions, teacher-education institutions, and other voices. 

All have points to make, concerns to protect, and all too often axes to grind, because the one who controls the funding gets to have the final say—and in the clearly-failing US schools, a perilous future for all of us is riding in the balance.

PHOTO CREDITS: I took the photo of Blue Valley South High School in southern Johnson County, KS, in February 2007. It is © 2007 by Jan S. Gephardt, and may be used with attribution, but no alterations. The second photo shows a school in Espoo, Finland; 2012 photo by Tuomas Uusheimofor the book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? By Pasi Sahlberg. The 2011 photo of the New Jersey school is by Tony Kurdzuk of the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Pushback from the Education-Industrial Compex

Textbook publishers resist the digital trend.

"Bye-Bye"? Maybe not yet.

Apparently, some industries insist on replaying their own version of the 1990s music industry's resistance to digital music--and the major publishers of textbooks are totally there.

In my last update I talked about the potential of e-textbooks as opposed to traditional, printed and bound "dead trees" textbooks. My post focused on the versatility and vastly-expanded possibilities e-textbooks could offer.

Unfortunately, that kind of versatility and useability do not describe the way things are right now.

Just like the old record companies, textbook companies are doing their best to resist the new realities of the digital landscape. Some of their techniques make digital textbooks a very bad "deal" for students.

They persist in charging high prices, yet often make their books "expire" after 6 months--making them more of an overpriced rental than a purchase. Sometimes they embed copyright enforcement measures that make digital textbooks impossible to sell, and they place stiff restrictions on sharing, as well.

All of these measures hinder accessibility, jack up expenses, and hinder the use of the book. (And in spite of all this, textbooks still get pirated anyway.)

Add to these problems the unpredictability of platform options, and you begin to understand why such an apparent "no-brainer" hasn't really taken off yet.

Reading textbooks on laptops, with their backlit screens, is hard on the eyes. But other options are unpredictable.

Cautious districts are sticking with paper versions for now.

Will the Kindle fizzle out or take off, as a textbook platform? Will more people adopt the Nook, the iPad, or some other platform for textbooks? Will the book for any given course be available in the right format? Will any of these suffer the same fate as the HP Tablet?

To continue with the music industry comparisons, no school in this age of shrinking budgets wants to be caught with a storage closet full of expensive "8-tracks" in a world that has settled on something different.

 In spite of all this, I think grassroots demand is likely to turn the tide eventually. Especially on the college level, we're beginning to see it rather strongly. Some colleges are pushing for all e-text adoption, or e-textbook rental. I know of more and more professors who are beginning to eschew single, or even multiple "dead-trees" textbooks in favor of online resources. Most scholarly journals are available online, and have been for some time.

The world as a whole is going digital. How long can the textbook companies resist?

PHOTO CREDITS: 
The "Bye-Bye Textbooks" graphic is from the Schools.com website. 
Many thanks to The Beaumont Enterprise newspaper for the image of piled-up "dead trees" books.

Troglodyte Textbooks for Digital Natives

Why do US schools miss an apparent "No Brainer"?

For anyone who actively uses digital media to explore their world, it seems obvious that schools need to move away from the traditional "dead trees" textbook format, and begin using digital textbooks.

The advantages are many.


Inkling from Bulent Keles on Vimeo.

The digital option offers an interface that:

• Can open from the main text to a variety of detailed supplementary information.
• Is capable of being lavishly illustrated with zoom-enabled photos, video or audio clips, and interactive maps, charts, and graphs.
• In the best-designed examples, allows individual users to tag, annotate, bookmark, and/or archive notes and passages.
• Is near-instantly searchable on a wide variety of variables.
• Costs a fraction of what a copy of a traditional textbook costs.
• Weighs only as much as the digital device into which it has been loaded.
• Requires no special accommodations for storage, beyond digital memory capacity.
• Will always be a "brand new" copy to each user.
• Can be updated frequently by authors and publishers, because updates can be done at relatively little expense.

By contrast, traditional textbooks:

• Offer only a single "static" text with at most a few sidebars.
• Are limited by practicality to a handful of illustrations, charts, maps, etc. on any given page--none of which can be made interactive.
• Generally cannot be annotated by individual users without leaving a permanent mark.
• Can only be searched via laborious visual scan or a (limited) index.
• Cost a lot of money to buy.
• Are often heavy and cumbersome, especially for younger children.
• Take up a lot of storage space, when not in use.
• Are subject to wear, tear, and vandalism.
• Are difficult and expensive to update.

Back problems from too-heavy school backpacks reached a peak of awareness around 2005.

South Korean students in Goesan use tablet PCs as textbooks.

"Everybody" (on the blogosphere, anyway) seems to believe it's the way of the future, the coming  trend. South Korea and Singapore already have begun riding this wave.


But the switch to digital textbooks in the US has been hit-and-miss, emphasis on the "miss."  Why aren't more US schools joining this trend?

I think there are several reasons, and most of them stem from the basic institution, which is structured so it must prioritize its own needs above those of students.

Politics is one major dis-incentive, in at least three ways.

Federal, state, and local education budgets have been slashed repeatedly, throughout the last decade. Digital textbooks may be a fraction of the cost of traditional ones, but schools already have storage rooms filled with traditional textbooks. And outfitting an entire school or district with e-readers is not cheap. Many schools just don't have the money.

A significant and vocal group of voters is old enough to look upon digital devices in schools as an extravagant luxury, and therefore a waste of money. They tend to complain, and they unfortunately are more likely to vote than more moderate thinkers. Thus, their views sometimes dominate school budget battles.

Finally, US school districts have traditionally been governed by the decisions of a local school board. Unlike Finland, South Korea, Singapore, and many other nations with widely-admired educational systems, our schools are not centrally managed by the federal government so that all schools are treated the same. Local control and dependence on local property taxes for a financial base make US schools an uneven patchwork. No Department of Education recommendation can decree that all schools will use e-textbooks. You may see that as a good thing or a bad thing, but it is the way we operate. Districts will (or won't) adopt digital textbooks individually, as they see fit.

This illustration demonstrates textbook capabilities of iPad tablets.

Another important dis-incentive to using digital textbooks is the confusion and discomfort many educators feel about e-readers. Even those who have mastered web surfing, email, and Facebook may be baffled by the dizzying array of options in the rapidly-expanding e-textbook field.

How should educators evaluate the merits of a Nook (left) or a Kindle (right)?

What kind of digital reader should they use? The wrong choice means a whole lot of money ill-used. But there are arguments both for and against using the iPad, Nook, Kindle, and a whole slew of other devices. Which give good advice? Which are just glorified ads?

Textbooks must offer sound, readable information that is aligned with the school's curriculum--and most educators understand how to judge a traditional-format textbook. But what makes a good digital one? And if they do find a good digital reader, is it supported by all of the textbooks their school needs?

They may be dog-eared, but most schools have piles of textbooks.

No wonder so many schools are still relying on the laptop cart in the corner of the classroom, and digging their old paper-bound-in-cardboard textbooks out of the library storage room each year! Besides, with all the other things they have to pay attention to, what educator has the time to do a genuinely-rigorous comparative evaluation?

Institutionally, public schools have never had either the funding or the functional incentives to operate at the cutting edge of technology. Unlike businesses, they have faced no compelling need to compete, so they have had to be dragged, late and unwillingly, into the computer age.

Will that history repeat itself for digital textbooks?

PHOTO CREDITS:
The video clip at the opening of this post is from the iPad In Schools blog/website's "The Future of the Textbook" post. The three views of iPads as textbooks is from the same site's "Why the iPad Should be Used in Classrooms" post.
The cartoon panel from Lynn Johnston's For Better or for Worse comic strip came from the Eclipse Wellness website.
The AP photo of the elementary students from Goesan, South Korea is from the Daily Herald (Chicago area, IL) online.
The photo of a textbook on a Nook is from the Barnes & Noble Booksellers website. The image of the Kindle is from the GEV website. 
Finally, the image of piles of traditional textbooks came from the Beaumont Enterprise (Beaumont, TX) website.
Many thanks to all of these sources!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
You may also find these articles interesting:
The Schools.com website's "Digital Learning: Final Chapter for Textbooks?" page.Classroom Aid's post, "It's a Digital World, Why not a Digital Textbook?"
Statistics on the Worldwide Center of Mathematics Blog website, in the post "The state of the Textbook Industry: Facts and Figures," by Brian L.
The Kindle-adoption experiment at  Clearwater (FL) High School, as described by the Techno Buffalo site.