L.A. Unified to Launch Electronic Textbook Experiment at 14 Schools

A giant lunge into the future is one of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s responses to its chronic textbook shortage.

In a partnership with Xerox Corp., an unusual electronic textbook experiment is scheduled to begin this fall at 14 campuses in Southeast Los Angeles.

If the program works as planned, it would allow teachers to draw from a computer bank of material to customize mini-booklets for their students that could supplement, or in some cases supplant, standard textbooks.

“It’s an exciting, exciting project . . . to see what the art of the possible is,” said district administrator Andrew Cazares.

But such cutting-edge solutions are expensive.

For the one-year test, the district will spend about $2 million, which works out to $90 a year per student, plus paper costs--more than triple its per capita expenditure on textbooks.

Although that includes some high-tech blackboards and videoconferencing as well as the materials, the high price and experimental nature of the project leads some to question why the district does not just buy more books instead.

“I think we’re getting a little bit carried away,” said Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar), the latest politician to take on the textbook cause. “Our children don’t even have the basic needs of yesterday, not to mention tomorrow.”

Grown from a liaison with Xerox, the project seemed the perfect answer to former Supt. Sid Thompson’s worries about his five-year goals for the district, announced in June 1995. Thompson needed a system that could accommodate his plan for textbook-demanding changes like algebra for all middle school students and biology for all high schoolers.

Around the same time, Xerox was exploring ways to tap into what would surely be a growth market: providing educational technology for public schools. Its marketing decisions were based in part on research that Xerox manager Jenny Altuna said showed West Coast teachers were not keen on textbooks, anyway.

“Teachers aren’t using a lot of their textbooks today,” Altuna said. “The survey showed 80% use them less than 50% of the time and 50% use them less than 20%.”

In fact, that study--by Arizona-based Electronic Instructional Design--looked at only two middle schools and it does not pose the logical follow-up question: How many of those teachers had enough textbooks for their students? The group that did the survey also has a vested interest: It trains teachers in uses of technology.

Nevertheless, the survey taps into growing skepticism about traditional textbooks in many reform-minded quarters. Chris Cross, president of the Council for Basic Education, contends that textbooks are more symbolic than essential, largely crutches for uncreative teachers.

Electronic texts offer promise, Cross said, because they “keep you from being caught in this bind of whatever’s being published at a certain time” and allow students to progress at different rates.

By January 1996, regular meetings began between Xerox and staff from L.A. Unified. Educators toured a more modest Xerox project in the Norwalk/La Mirada district--which is essentially just an online textbook.

Unlike interactive systems, where students learn while seated before a computer, the L.A. Unified project would operate like an online catalog for teachers, producing a printed booklet for them or for students. One argument against using an interactive system here, Altuna explains, is equity: many students in L.A. Unified do not have access to a classroom computer.

Only four groups of schools applied to be part of the experiment; two clusters next door to each other in Huntington Park and Bell were selected.

This month, Xerox is having a panel of district teachers trained by Electronic Instructional Design in how to build a digital library. By the end of the summer or early fall, that database is to house material including lesson plans, and videos and software, which could be used to teach English and math. Other subjects are expected to follow.

Teachers from the 14 schools will be taught to use a special reference computer, four of which are to be set up at each school. From there, they will place orders directly, and two days after placing the order, the Xerox contract promises, customized booklets will be delivered.

Because selections for the digital library have barely begun, it remains unclear what will be available. But administrators say all materials will meet state curriculum guidelines as well as district standards.

Safeguards to prevent teachers from emphasizing one area of study while ignoring other grade-level material appear to be scant, however. Altuna said teachers who order one lesson will receive an online query about whether they have completed the preceding lessons.

For now, the program is not in competition with textbook funds, having been financed out of the general budget. But administrator Cazares hints that may change, noting that in Norwalk/La Mirada a state waiver allowed textbook money to be used.