In a scathing Post editorial on the Our Virginia: Past and Present debacle, Loudoun schools come out somewhat clean, the SOLs not so much. Kudos to LCPS for appearing decisive, although what our district does to really address the issues of quality textbooks will be more important than just pulling questionable resources from classrooms after the fact.
The Washington Post, however, does highlight an idea LCPS should consider, especially since it requires it of its own students: checking references! Virginia's superintendent of public instruction Patricia I. Wright says that Virginia will require, in the future, that "publishers provide documentation on the accuracy of their products." Actually, I thought this would be a given. Whenever I pick up a professional journal article, the first thing I do is flip to the back and scan the bibliography. Same for student papers. It gives me a starting point for assessing the ideas in the work.
I would have thought our state's vetting process included the same starting point, whether formally or informally. This is another step we all can do to improve our system.
This incident highlights another advantage to discarding printed textbooks in favor of online materials. It's much easier to update the online version than to recall or correct the printed books.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to embrace modern technology and I support utilizing web-based learning tools. However, a weekend trip to the Cascades library finds heavy use of the library's computers by people accessing the internet. Many of these people are children and teenagers. I suspect that this is driven in part by some of the users not having access at home. Assuming this situation falls along socioeconomic lines, taking away printed textbooks potentially puts another barrier in front of those children who are already at a disadvantage...not because their families value education any less than more affluent families, but because their opportunities outside of school are limited due to their socioeconomic situation. (see Marita's Bargain in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell)
ReplyDeleteWhile electronic textbooks give us a way to quickly fix errors in the texts, they do not relieve the state or the district from properly vetting the material in the first place. We should work on the root cause of the problem which is a lack of qualified capacity, thoroughness and/or discipline at the publisher, state, and local levels. Once we have done this we should then look at utilizing electronic formats, but only in a way that does not disadvantage significant portions of our student population.
Oh great...who's going to pay for the equipment for these students to access the "internet material"? Oh yeah...we can include a personal computer device in the budget for each student!
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