Are American schools frequently short of essential textbooks?

Question

Computer scientist and journalist Meredith Broussard recently wrote a skeptical perspective on the uses and benefits of computers called Artificial Unintelligence.

One of the stories she tells where technology has failed to help is about parts of the American school system in Philadelphia. She discusses an attempt to use data to improve local school standards (as measured by standardised tests). She reports:

After six months of this, I discovered that the test could be gamed. Not by using a beat-the-test strategy, but by a shockingly low-tech strategy: reading the textbook that contains the answers.

So the standardised scores can be raise significantly by having access to the right books. But this is a problem (perhaps not just for Philadelphia):

One of those problems—shared by districts in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and other major cities—is that many schools don’t have enough money to buy books.

She reports that a single book The Elements of Literature costs $115 but that in 2012-13 her local school had an allocation of jut $30 per student to buy books for all subjects not just literature. And the book budget was eliminated entirely in the next two years.

Her argument is partly that technological magic bullets don't usually fix many key problems. But, more specifically, that parts of the American school system have a very obvious way to improve their performance–make sure all students have access to the right textbooks–but fail to achieve it.

The USA is one of the richest countries in the developed world. Can it really be true that the quality of its education in many regions is held back by something as simple as a lack of textbooks?

Update

Broussard's argument is also summarised in this article in The Atlantic (which is more accessible if you don't have the book). While the issue of whether teaching from textbooks related to standardised tests rather than providing a good general education is an issue and, perhaps, an important one, it isn't the question here.

Given that this is how the USA measures educational achievement and given that textbooks seem essential to achieving good performance, do schools have enough books? Perhaps they should educate people differently but that is not the question here (feel free to pose the separately as a new question). The question is: do schools typically have enough books to do a good job given the current system?

Answer 1

I will not comment on Broussard's larger argument, but the factual question about textbooks is straightforward. Yes, it is common for local school districts in the United States to lack adequate textbooks by the standards of any advanced industrial country. Even where the number of textbooks is adequate for the size of the student population, the quality may not be, i.e. old and outdated books are used.

This issue has been more or less considered common knowledge here in the United States for decades and has been widely reported in the press. In April 2018 the New York Times published an article with several examples of the problem from around the country, including photos of the textbooks in use. Here is a sample of other news stories from local outlets over the last few years, of which many more can easily be found:

• "Book-Starved Philly Schools Forced to Fend for Themselves"
• "Many Arizona school districts using old, outdated textbooks"
• "NC Schools In Limbo Between Textbook Shortages And Promises Of A Digital Future"

I have not yet seen an independent, nationwide assessment of the problem. However going back to 1996, a groups representing textbook publishers and a teacher's trade union conducted a survey of 878 teachers.

Sixteen percent of the teachers who responded to the survey said they did not have enough textbooks for their students, and 46 percent of the teachers reported that they were unable to assign homework because there were not enough textbooks for students to take home.

[...]

The survey also found that 25 percent of the teachers reported using textbooks that were more than 10 years old. Slightly more than half the teachers said their students were exposed to outdated information as a result of using old textbooks.

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You also raise the question of how such a thing is possible. Here it may be helpful to keep in mind that public school administration in the United States is highly decentralized. The federal government provides less than 10% of the money that supports public schools. Often the states and cities with the greatest need also have the weakest local tax base. In middle-class suburban communities, textbook shortages are rare because these local districts are the most able to adequately fund their schools.