Out of Print: Reimagining the K-12 Textbook in a Digital Age - This paper highlights the sea change underway in the multi-billion dollar U.S. K-12 instructional materials market enabled by recent technology and intellectual property rights innovations. With a focus on the ultimate impact on student learning, the report provides examples of lessons learned from recent digital and open (OER) content initiatives by leading states and school districts and offers comprehensive recommendations for government, industry, and educators to ensure that the inevitable shift to digital instructional materials improves student achievement and engagement and efficiently uses scarce resources. (SETDA, September 2012)...

Choosing Blindly: Instructional Materials, Teacher Effectiveness and the Common Core - A new report from the Brookings Institution focuses on instruction materials, which, evidence shows, have large effects on student learning. The authors argue that states, with support from the federal government and philanthropic organizations, should collect systematic information on which materials are being used in which schools. (Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, April 2012)...

Digital Textbook Playbook - The Digital Textbook Playbook is a guide to help K-12 educators and administrators advance the conversation toward building a rich digital learning experience. This Playbook offers information about determining broadband infrastructure for schools and classrooms, leveraging home and community broadband to extend the digital learning environment, and understanding necessary device considerations. It also provides lessons learned from school districts that engaged in successful transitions to digital learning. (Digital Textbook Collaborative, 2012)...

Virtual Textbook of Organic Chemistry - This online resource provides teachers and students with a comprehensive organic chemistry textbook covering the usual topics treated in a college sophomore-level course. (Michigan State University, 2012)...

The Promise of Accessible Textbooks: Increased Achievement for All Students - Technological advances during the past 50 years have resulted in alternate format materials, providing those with disabilities new access to a world of information and ideas that traditionally has been restricted to printed text. Consistent Braille formatting, high-quality audio versions, synthetic speech, and electronic text are just some examples. Because it offers significantly increased flexibility and enables rapid transformations from one media type to another, electronic text in particular is emerging as the foundation of a revolutionary approach to the provision of alternate format materials. As that approach is realized, students with disabilities will be provided with a wide range of accessible and individualized learning materials; materials that have been extracted from a single digital source file. The efficiency of this approach is immediately apparent, and while there are numerous legal, commercial and technological issues to be overcome, everyone stands to gain from achieving a solution. (Skip Stahl, National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum, 2007)...

Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable - This report considers the market imperfections behind rising textbook costs, while providing shorter term solutions to increase affordability and longer term solutions to develop more of a demand-driven market. Specifically, the committee recommends initiatives including textbook rentals, the use of no-cost content and increased financial aid. The study concludes that the real solution may come from a collaborative effort between federal policymakers, the higher education community and the technology industry to create a national digital marketplace. (The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 2007)...

Survey of College Instructors Regarding the Use of Supplemental Materials in the Classroom - College-level instructors are increasingly turning to supplemental materials, including both print and online materials, as concerns about the preparedness and engagement of their students grows. This survey of 502 college professors finds a seven-point jump in the percentage of college-level instructors that require supplemental materials in their classrooms in just two years’ time. This comes at the same time that 55% of professors worry that the latest incoming freshmen are unprepared for the rigors of college education, with a large plurality holding the belief that freshmen today are less-prepared than those just four years ago. (Rebecca Wittman and Christian Peck, Association of American Publishers, September 2006) ...

College Textbooks: Enhanced Offerings Appear To Drive Recent Price Increases - This report examines: (1) what has been the change in textbook prices; (2) what factors have contributed to changes in textbook prices; and (3) what factors explain why a given U.S. textbook may retail outside the United States for a different price. The report finds that: (1) in the last two decades, college textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation but have followed closely behind tuition increases; (2) while many factors affect textbook prices, the increasing costs associated with developing products designed to accompany textbooks best explains price increases in recent years; and (3) U.S. college textbook prices may exceed prices in other countries because prices reflect market conditions found in each country. (U.S. Government Accountability Office, July 2005)...

The Boom/Bust Cycle in Educational Publishing - This presentation analyzes the business of textbook publishing. The author examines the impact of changes in and allocation of school funding, the No Child Left Behind Act, year-to-year instructional material purchases, the textbook adoption market and demographics in an attempt to predict the future health of the educational publishing industry. (Peter P. Appert, Goldman Sachs, February 2004) ...

Meeting the Challenge of Science Literacy: Project 2061 Efforts to Improve Science Literacy - This essay provides highlights from Project 2061’s study of high school textbooks, arguing for the importance of aligning textbooks with Project 2061’s Benchmarks for Science Literacy, the National Research Council’s National Science Education Standards and supporting instructional strategies that research has shown to be most effective. A summary of the Project 2061 study is available. (Mary Koppal and Ann Caldwell, The American Society for Cell Biology, Spring 2004)...

Middle School Textbooks Don’t Make the Grade - U.S. 4th graders score above average in international science tests, but 12th graders score among the lowest. Improved middle school science textbooks could help maintain the advantage that U.S. students seem to lose in middle school. This article reviews and critiques middle school physical science textbooks with regard to scientific accuracy, adherence to a realistic portrayal of the scientific approach and appropriateness and pedagogic effectiveness of the material for the grade for which it was presented, finding significant shortcomings and proposing strategies for addressing the issue. (John Hubisz, American Institute of Physics, May 2003)...

Review of Middle School Physical Science Texts - Physical science textbooks used by most middle school students nationwide have many errors and irrelevant photographs, complicated illustrations, experiments that could not possibly work, and diagrams and drawings that represent impossible situations, a new study of the 12 most popular science books concludes. (John Hubisz, Middle School Physical Sciences Resource Center, 2002)...

The Trouble with Textbooks - High school science textbooks give only fragmentary treatment to fundamentally important concepts and "at their best ... are a collection of missed opportunities," according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The latest study of Project 2061, AAAS' long-term science and math education reform effort, points to serious shortcomings in content coverage and instructional design that fail to make science understandable and meaningful to students. (Stephen Budiansky, AAAS, February 2001)...