California's intrepid lawmakers want to do away with big textbooks in schools. In fact, the (mostly Democratic) legislators have forbidden the state's school districts from purchasing textbooks longer than 200 pages.
Writes the Sacramento Bee [free subscription required]:
The bill, believed to be the first of its kind nationwide, was hailed by supporters as a way to revolutionize education.
Yes, it's quite the achievement — at least on a par with, let's say, rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
Over the last thirty years, California has gone from shining educational example to embarrassing underachiever.
• Its teaching standards are much lower than those elsewhere, with
less than half of all local school districts requiring teachers to get
full standard certification in the subjects they teach (the national
average is well over 80 percent).
• Among all states, California is a dismal number 49 when it comes to controlling class size.
• Its kids rank number 48 in academic performance, with only Louisiana and Mississippi producing bigger failures. (This is true even when you control for the state's great numbers of migrant and minority students. Speaking of which: Only one in five black and Latino pupils
in L.A. score proficient or better on their English and math SATs, versus three
in five white and Asian kids. See here.)
So the best way for lawmakers to address the crisis is, um, let's see...to impose an arbitrary 200-page textbook limit, whose only likely effect will be to force publishers to split existing works into multiple volumes. Such genius!
What will Sacramento's next contribution to the education system be? Hard to say, but my money's on a series of debates about whether to provide schools with generic toilet paper or Charmin triple-ply. [thanks, Martin]
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