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Less reliance on textbooks? BOE studying it
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · March 23, 2017
Imagine a school district with fewer — not zero, but fewer — textbooks.
School administrators asked the West Branch Board of Education to consider joining the “movement” toward “Open Educational Resources” — a national database of government-vetted lesson plans, teaching approaches and pieces of curriculum.
The board seemed both interested yet skeptical. Board members took no official action at the March 9 meeting, but seemed interested in exploring the idea further.
Superintendent Kevin Hatfield talked about how he, Curriculum Director Sara Oswald and Technology Director Doug Cummings attended a meeting to explain how the system works, how it could save school districts money, and how it could provide more up-to-date information than textbooks which schools typically keep for multiple years.
“Right now you have textbooks with George Bush as president of the United States,” Hatfield said of the local school district. “And Pluto’s a planet in most of our textbooks.”
Oswald said that teachers from across the United States could develop a lesson plan, for example, complete with videos, examples, teaching practices, etc., and submit it to an OER committee — part of the U.S. Department of Education. The OER committee would then review the lesson plan and decide if it adequately teaches the standards it purports to. The OER does not create a national curriculum, but adds the plan to its growing database.
“It’s not like Wikipedia where anybody can get on there and edit it and make up stuff until somebody else catches it,” Oswald said.
Hatfield and Oswald said that West Branch teachers would then pick and choose from the available plans to “tailor” one that fits its curriculum. All of the pieces pulled from the OER would then get copied into West Branch’s own “hub,” Oswald said.
The local teachers would still maintain its own curriculum, yet could choose to teach certain lesson plans from the textbooks, or others from the OER, or even from their own making, she said.
The OER is “public domain,” so the plans are free, Hatfield said. He noted that the school’s most recent reading series cost $110,000, and the average textbook series costs about $70,000.
“It’s free like a puppy,” Hatfield said of OER. “It’s a lot of work.”
Oswald said some money the school district uses on textbooks could be shifted toward professional development.
Board member Mike Owen hesitated when he heard the USDE would screen the submissions.
“Right now, I have to be honest, that causes me some concern,” he said. “I’m serious.”
Hatfield assured him that West Branch, as other schools, “would have almost complete control” of what they teach. One of his concerns, though, would be ensuring that the local curriculum is thorough.
“Is it reflective of the rest of the world in terms of a civil rights perspective? Is it reflective of the larger society?” the superintendent said.
High School Principal Shannon Bucknell pointed out that some of his teachers are already piecing together their lessons plans -- Spanish III and Spanish IV, for example, “use mostly other sources” other than textbooks.
“We’re doing it right now,” he said.
Owen said he wanted to know “how things are vetted” and “who’s controlling it?”
“I don’t want to see our science resources skewed,” he said. “I don’t want to see our civic resources skewed.”
Board member Jodi Yeggy made a sarcastic reference to the controversy over President Donald Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as the secretary of education.
“You’re suggesting that the U.S. Department of Education and its new Secretary of Education might skew?” she smiled.
Oswald said that was a concern at the OER meeting.
“I’m with you on that,” she said. “That’s why they had a breakout session about that.”
Bucknell said one concern of teachers is that their lesson plans would get rated by the committee, and that those ratings would become part of the public record.
Oswald said teachers used to open up a textbook to Page 1 and work their way through to the end. Today, they start with standards and try to find the best way “to teach to those standards to mastery.”
“We’re already going out and finding other resources” to do that, she said. “Our teachers aren’t asking for textbooks. (OER) is one resource.”
The school district would still want to coordinate the lesson plans so that teachers do not overlap.
Hatfield said this is not a move away from all textbooks.
“Somebody might way, ‘Did you hear that? The West Branch School District is never going to purchase textbooks again,’ That’s just not true. We will,” he said. “But we want to make sure our teachers — with the board’s blessing — actually spend a little time looking at this to see what kind of resources are out there.”
“We might be able to do something for $5,000 to $6,000 as opposed to $80,000,” he said.
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