From 30 Pounds to 10.3 Ounces: Tomorrow's Textbooks

July 20, 2009— -- Children across America wake up each weekday and toss on a backpack almost as large as they are, filled with heavy and often outdated textbooks. But a proposal released by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) thinks the load for the students -- and the financial load for school districts -- can be lightened.

The proposal by the Washington think tank, to the delight of Amazon.com, is titled "A Kindle in Every Backback: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools." It details a situation in which 56 million students from kindergarten through high school would receive a Kindle, or similar electronic reading device, instead of traditional textbooks.

"We're looking to spark a conversation to improve the education of our children," said Thomas Freedman, the author of the proposal and ex-senior adviser to the president and special assistant to the president for policy planning during the Clinton administration.

The sentiment is shared by some school administrators. "Discussion like this opens up the door for online media in the classroom," said Themy Sparangis, the chief technology director for the Los Angeles Unified School District. "We've been talking about it for years, but now it's more than just talk."

The idea appeals particularly to Californians, as the state government has recently approved a number of open-source materials for classroom use, which may help cut textbook costs in the fall.

Similar programs have been tried, but most have received mixed reviews. A trial run that gave 250 students Sony eBook readers at Northwest Missouri State University showed little promise. While some students utilized the devices, most preferred to use laptops to access the etexts they were provided, according to a university news release. No such program has been tried on the public school level.

It might be because getting the idea off the ground in public schools would be tough. "It would take a completely different vision of public education," said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "There ways to spread out costs, but it would require a different look at infrastructure."

Sparangis supports the introduction of an eBook reader, granted the apropriate research is done to select the best unit. "Some people might look at it like it's just a high-cost book," he said. "But sustainability over time could cut costs."