State lawmaker favors cutting use of traditional textbooks in schools - KAYU

"Each year, the state government spends about $65 million on textbooks for school districts across Washington – and at least one member of the Legislature sees the spending as a big opportunity for savings. “Textbooks are absolutely an idea whose time is long gone,” state Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle. “They are expensive, they are commercially driven, they are proprietary and, worst of all, they are educationally generic.” In January, Carlyle will be pushing a bill in Olympia to encourage school districts to move to “open source” materials. These are free, Internet-based publications that teachers can simply photocopy for students and that can be accessed online as well...."