State educators forgo lackluster new textbooks for technology
by Zack Harold
CHARLESTON, W.Va.--West Virginia schools won't adopt new social studies textbooks this year. Instead, state Department of Education officials say the $36 million allocated for the adoption will be put to much better use.
Carla Williamson, director of the state education department's Office of Instruction, advised state board of education members earlier this month to skip this year's scheduled social studies textbook adoption and reroute the $18 million it set aside for social studies books in 2010 and 2011.
Williamson said the department should spend that money on technology in schools.
She said none of the textbooks submitted for adoption this year met the department's requirements.
Not that there were many ink-and-paper materials to choose from this year.
Whenever the state education department looks to adopt new books, Williamson said she brings in "master teachers" from the content area to review books. This year, reviewers at all grade levels felt publishers submitted textbooks "just to clean out their warehouses," she said.
Williamson said only one textbook publisher submitted a bid for kindergarten through seventh grade books. No publishers submitted bids for eighth-graders' "West Virginia Studies" social studies course.
She said teacher reviewers rejected one social studies textbook because the publisher only updated the book's cover and copyright information. Another publisher included a small insert in the back called the "West Virginia addition."
"Anything that wasn't in the book that they could add in that addition, they did. They just tried to stick some stuff in the back of the book. That addition didn't sufficiently address our criteria," Williamson said.
The kindergarten through seventh grade reviewers thought their books were "just too Californian," Williamson said - all the books' maps and graphics were focused on California.
A page out of a third grade book featured four pictures - George Washington, Betsy Ross, Thomas Jefferson and the White House. Students were supposed to select the photo that didn't belong.
The answer? Betsy Ross, "because she didn't have anything to do with the presidency," Williamson said. "This is not higher-order thinking. This is crazy."
Williamson said West Virginia's textbook criteria require materials to teach life skills, including "global awareness." In explaining how their textbook represented "global awareness," one publisher pointed reviewers to a picture of a globe.
One book from the kindergarten through fifth-grade group featured a botched picture of the American flag.
"They put that flag in the book backward," Williamson said. "These are things that really drive teachers crazy."
Publishers are looking to go digital in the next couple years, however, making it easier to customize classroom materials for states' specific needs, she said.
"But if we don't have the infrastructure of the broadband, the hardware and the wireless in the schools for the kids to be able to access that, it's not going to do us any good to have the materials out there," she said.
West Virginia adopts textbooks every two years, alternating between social studies, science, math and reading.
Williamson said bringing technology into every West Virginia classroom will cost far more than $36 million but said the money would work as a "jumpstart."
Williamson said social studies would benefit the most from digital materials and will be first in line for adoption come 2012.
"(A social studies book) will always be out of date the day it's printed," she said.
But with digital materials, publishers can update their materials as often as they need to, Williamson said. Gone are the days of classroom maps that still show the U.S.S.R. and Czechoslovakia.
Williamson said the textbook money could also purchase new touch-screen computers for classrooms. She said the education department is experimenting with Apple's iPad, testing applications that allow students to digitally interact with atoms or the Periodic Table of Elements.
"Our kids are so used to manipulating. They learn all the time," she said. "Our kids power down when they come to school."