How do we ensure that schools teach to learning the essentials of academics, while making sure that we allow time for complex, individual and ever changing emotional and humane characteristics? Any thoughts?

On September 24th, NASA issued a press release telling the world that water molecules had been discovered on the Moon's surface. At CK-12 we emailed this news article to each other, and upon reading it my first reaction was that we may need to update our Earth Science FlexBook. Sure enough, we open up to the Earth, Moon, and Sun chapter and go to the Lunar Surface section, and it begins with the proclamation "The Moon has no water." After another careful pass of the NASA "Mission News" article, I put together a couple sentences to replace this one, writing:

Looking at the Lunar Surface section, I recalled that the Moon had been in the news earlier this week as well. Doing a quick search, I dug up an article from September 21st about how NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had recorded temperatures in permanently dark craters on the Moon that are less than -238 degrees Celsius (-397 degrees Fahrenheit). A NASA scientist claims that these are "among the lowest that have been measured anywhere in the solar system, including the surface of Pluto." So of course I need to add a couple lines about this astonishing factoid, as well as some well-established average day and night time surface temperatures to flush out the section.

STEM education is marginalized. Many subjects are important to providing students with a well-rounded education. Science, math, critical thinking, physical education, writing/composition and the arts complement each other and are each essential to preparing our students for the future.  Many reports supported by statisitics and reasons (SETDA, EdWeek, NCES, Rising above the gathering storm , A splintered Vision of education, etc) have shown that the American students are far behind their international counterparts.

We need to ensure that students are part of the conversation and are engaged in their education. This is a must if we want our students to learn about their future and its challenges.  We need to ensure that they have a deep and thorough knowledge of the world from a scientific point of view as well as a cultural and historical point of view.

Science is not just about facts and skills, it is also about being responsible citizens. We need the next generation to be aware of the consequences of our actions, whether regarding resources, or our impact on the Earth. How can we solve, or at minimum slow global warming if our elementary school students are missing lessons about the Carbon cycle? How can we compete with overseas manufacturing if our high school students are not taught engineering? How will we prevent another global credit crisis if our students do not properly understand basic mathematics principles at the very least?

· If only 60% of 7^th to 12^th grade public school teachers have undergraduate degrees majoring in Math?

· If 29% of the teachers report teaching science two or fewer days per week?

We can no longer accept or encourage the mindset that some students are incapable of being successful at math and science. Every one of our students can and must be given the instruction and teacher resource dedication it takes to help them to gain a thorough and long lasting understanding of the essential principles of a STEM education. There are many angles from which we must approach this problem: assuring that teachers are adequately knowledgeable in the subject they are teaching, allotting proper funds to STEM classes, providing deep curricular rather then mile wide content, improving and modernizing STEM curricula, and letting go of the idea that science and math are only within the grasp of a select few.

No longer can we afford our students thinking that they are “No good in science or math”, “I don’t need these for real life” and “I don’t have the natural affinity for these subjects.” This mindset has to change!

Many of you may have already read that California announced findings from their digital and free textbooks initiative.  Many of you may have also received an email from us about this. We salute all the organizations and individuals that took part in this initiative. These people are real givers and care about what is happening in education.

And, what of the results? In brief, of the 16 donations –10 books were 90% or above aligned to State Standards, of which 6 were from CK-12. Out of these 16 books 4 books had 100% alignment; here again CK-12 had 3 books. Our lowest scoring book had 83% alignment. We are absolutely going to make it close to 100%. In the meantime, we have plenty of challenges to solve.

The take away for the organization

The naysayers are worried that a digital textbook is just a collection of links and multimedia with no coherent outline. This is however, far from the truth with our content. We have spent a lot of time trying to ensure state standard alignment as well as quality of content. Practicing teachers from across the nation have reviewed books in their subject expertise, supplemented by 40 high school intern’s feedback, thoughts and wishes.

Access to technology has become an issue in K-12 education. Some worry about all students not having access to computers or the Internet at school or at home, and think that students shouldn't spend all their time in front of the computer; what they forget is that the solution is simple – one can print digital textbooks.  In addition, the future requires that students be comfortable and adept at using computers. It is the tool for the next generation. If we do not provide computers, American students will be left behind. Do we want our children to grow up and have to go overseas to find work where all the jobs are going to be? Can you imagine our children being illegal immigrants looking for greener pastures?

Others say that there will be no cost savings because of the technology costs.  There is concern about finding a standardized format to deliver books, which can also be loaded onto e-readers.  A few think that digital textbooks will hurt students with learning differences; others think it will help them.

Many of these concerns point to something that happens when people are given new options – their minds are set in the old way, they are afraid of the new and the unknown. We have addressed these challenges with our product and delivery of the product – by creating an online reader, and providing a print format for students that do not have access to computers. This project is not about creating more of a digital divide but about providing access to information for all students.

People are concerned that we are regurgitating Wikipedia articles or random hyper links or YouTube videos.  We are far from this. When we incorporate outside mresources, we carefully place each of these items in context. During the summer we had 20 high school interns who went through our content finding examples of videos or multimedia links and placing them in the right spot.

Many have compared us to Wikipedia or asked how we differ from Wikipedia. Indeed most people forget that Wikipedia was seeded with content from Encyclopedia Britannica and then only later did Wikipedia became the collaborative site it is today. Even now though there are millions of articles and users, in reality only a small percent of people work on the articles. In fact, there are many articles that are the voice of just one. We are still at an early stage in our development, analogous to where Wikipedia was when they seeded their project.

Richard Koman is right when he says “Hmm, no funding for hardware, no funding for teacher training, no requirement to implement. Sounds like pissing in the wind.”

In California, K-12 schooling has a mandate that every student have their own books (Williams Act, 2000) and those funds can only be used for textbooks. There is no way to redirect those funds for anything else, not even to fund printing digital books. There are no funds for teachers if they decide not to buy textbooks from publishers and use digital books instead. Very often the textbooks are lying around while the teachers are putting together their own curriculum. As a district you cannot afford to lose the money that the state gives you to purchase textbooks. This is really what Koman means when he contends that a lack of funding is going to cripple this initiative and we agree. We need to have the state put their money where their mouth is.

Let me reiterate the basic facts about CA initiative –

• These are HS textbooks
• These HS textbooks are free and digital
• This program was announced with a very short delivery period
• Students don’t need a computer to read these books as long as there is one computer and access to a printer or even a memory stick to take home or take to FedEx- Kinko’s like entities for printing
• These Flexbooks are locked in PDF format for two years for the initiative; however they will be improving even more during that time and one can go to our website and use the improved versions.
• You can print as much of the Flexbooks as you need or want
• This initiative was not a competition but open to everyone to participate.  None of the traditional publishers other than Pearson availed of this opportunity
• This is an open educational resource (OER), which means that the project and the products will continually evolve.  If you have been following our progress in the last one year you would have seen that. One of the fundamental differences is that Open Source is implicit for software whereas OER is specific for education resource

So what are people saying about our work?

We have been following many of the social websites such as Twitter, Slashdot, as well as other blogs that have been following the development of the CA Initiative and most of them show their excitement and are saying that this is  “the future of the textbooks.”  A few show skepticism about the delivery of the books. Some folks are frustrated that the formatting is not correct or perfect.  I am thrilled that people are talking about this, as it will set the bar for us.  However we have to be realistic and recognize the fact that this is not easy to do right from the start.  We have to create automation.

There is also some confusion about the licensing.  We have licensed our content as Creative Common by attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license.  This license allows one to take content from our site and mix and match it.  However, any improvements made are also considered under this license, i.e. all improvement must be shared with community at large.

We are not perfect yet, we might never be.  Since these books are generated through automated programming the format is hard to get right/perfect.  The content is not hand-formatted like regular publishing, hence they may not have the same formatting people expect.  Because we are a young organization that has only just started our work, we will make things much better.  We are also working on a LaTex version that will be out by next month.  For anyone interested they can check out a sample version.


Some people want to have the ability to have multiple books open at the same time.  Perhaps one can do that in a multiple windows view such that you can go back and forth between the texts.   They also want the ability to use these books the way that we use them today – annotating, highlighting and to be able to keep these books forever. Please be patient we are doing all these things – as resources allow.  On the other hand the books are yours to keep forever.  Enjoy!!

I will be honest before I start this blog and admit that I am not an expert in markets. However, I was intrigued when I read the article,  Time To End The Monopoly In Education. According to author James Coulson, even though the stimulus is well intentioned, it is counterproductive. Here are some of the reasons he cites:

* The returns from the ballooning spending in education have been less than nothing.

* Student achievement has been flat for the last 40 years (according to a DOE study).

* In literature on education, 59 studies show that the least regulated and the most market-like education systems show efficiency and outperform the monopoly school systems. In comparison, not a single study finds the monopoly schools to be a more efficient system.

Coulson’s point about the shortcomings of the well-intentioned stimulus is further shown to hold up because since the 1970s student achievement has been flat. Does putting more money into the system improve student learning? To prove his point, Coulson compares Washington D.C. spending on public schools to spending on voucher systems. This comparison was to indicate the effects of the spending on these two diverse systems. The voucher program costs a quarter of the price of the pubic supported schools while far out performing them. For example, within three years the students who benefit from the vouchers show reading levels that are two grades ahead, a high percent of them finish high school, and the majority go on to four-year colleges or universities. Despite these statistics, President Obama has decided to phase out the voucher program, Coulson points out.

We could argue that there are other issues that are affecting these systems. Could it be the freedom that private schools offer the teachers, versus the constrained atmosphere that public system subjects its teachers to?

"Far from being an engine of wealth creation, the education system is bleeding the economy to death."

To further prove his point, Coulson reviewed global evidence in markets versus monopolies. The question he asks in this review paper is, "Would families and communities be better served by a free and competitive education market place than they are by our current system of  state school monoplies?"  To avoid the bias that school systems have different cultural and economic relevance in different countries, the study was focused on comparing public versus private schools internationally.  Fifty-five studies covering more than twenty nations were reviewed.  As shown by Figure 1,  eight different criteria were used.  Of these, academic achievement, as measured by student test scores and effieicieny per dollar spent per student showed a statistically valid difference for public versus private schools.  The private school showed an advantage of 8 to 1, where as free-market outnumbered school-monlopoly by a ratio of more than 17 to 1.  These findings span across very diverse cultures and economies.