During the first-ever Digital Learning Day, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chief Julius Genachowski unveiled an ambitious plan earlier this year to get schools to switch from print to digital textbooks by 2017. Dubbed the Digital Textbook Playbook, it's a recommendation for how schools could transform…

The Common Core State Standards' emphasis on informational text arose in part from research suggesting that employers and college instructors found students weak at comprehending technical manuals, scientific and historical journals, and other texts pivotal to work in those arenas. The common core's vision of informational text includes literary…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") is a bimonthly report from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This issue includes the following articles: (1) ARL Encourages Members to Refrain from Signing Nondisclosure or…

Compared with a couple of years ago, children in many California schools have one less tome to lug in their backpacks. Instead of standard textbooks, they use what publisher Pearson Education Inc. calls its "digital path" to California's elementary history and social sciences curriculum. Since the state school board approved it in…

A new generation of history textbooks, produced since the 1994 release of controversial national history standards, is now being reviewed by key states. These textbooks appear at a time when educational publishing is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few huge media corporations. Discusses the business of educational publishing, which is…

Many of those who have never lived in a textbook-adoption state have never really understood the concept of "book depository." Depositories exist in many of the approximately two dozen textbook- adoption states. Florida is one of those states, and it is a major force in the national instructional materials market. The Florida book…

This study examines a sample of reports submitted by publishers to the Florida Department of Education for school textbook revisions to be adopted during 1985-86. The study determines (1) state Learner Verification and Revision (LVR) procedures used by publishers, (2) problems reflected in the reports, and (3) recommendations on the conduct and…

Symposium papers presented at an Annual Meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education (Chicago, 1972), all of which concern banks of test items for use in constructing criterion referenced tests, comprise this document. The first paper, "Locally Produced Item Banks" by Thomas J. Slocum, presents information on the…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This April 2, 2004 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Black Colleges and the Politics of Race" (Samuels, Albert L.); (2)…