Cobb’s school board decided Wednesday to purchase $2.9 million worth of electronic math textbooks for its middle and high school students.
It’s a scaled-down version of the $7.5 million proposal 100 teachers endorsed that would have provided printed math textbooks, workbooks and online resources to each of the district’s 108,000 students.
Board members rejected that proposal in April after several tea party activists said the books were too closely linked to Common Core, a set of controversial national standards
Purchasing books tied to those standards would dumb down students and amount to a federal takeover of education, they said.
The board’s decision in April shocked the superintendent and sparked protests from teachers who argued that the textbooks are needed to build curriculum, lesson plans and homework.
Without them, students will be left to navigate free and unreliable websites, exposing teachers to copyright infringement and racking up high printing costs for the district, they said. Cobb students have struggled with the state’s math standards, which have changed frequently in recent years.
“You have struck a fantastic proposal to try to mitigate and strike a balance between what’s going on in state level with those involved with Common Core,” said board chairman Randy Scamihorn.
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