Is having no text books common in elementary schools now?

[Nikia]

My neighbor is a teacher and not happy with her job. She was saying how she spends so much time developing lesson plans and curriculm. I asked her whether the text books provided a good framework for the lessons. "We don't use textbooks at our school"
This is at a regular public elementary. My children are younger than school age so I wondered about this.

[mbperrin]

1. Getting more common in all schools now. For the worse.

These scripted curricula are all the rage now, and to keep you on the reservation, these canned lessons have all the materials included. That way, no one can sneak a peek a day ahead or a page extra.

This silly concept is called a guaranteed curriculum, and it violates everything we know about differentiation and developmentally-appropriate education.

Big companies are making millions selling it, though.

The commercialization of education is similar to the commercialization of sex - no real involvement, money changes hands, and someone ends up with an incurable disease...

[We People]

2. Most likely it's "The wave of the future"

Then all children and their parents can be "on the same page," so to speak. The one that "helps" us to know what to think and accept, no doubt.

[MichiganVote]

3. yes.

[LWolf]

4. Even when we have textbooks,

they are simply a skeleton to start with when developing lessons.

But yes, it is common. My district has skipped the last two textbook adoption cycles; no money to buy new texts.

Since the last Language Arts adoption was based on student consumables and an online component, there is no actual "textbook." The district dropped the online component after a year, and it's been at least 4 years since they purchased any consumables.

Of course, when a new text book is adopted, they round up all the old books and get rid of them to force teachers to embrace the new adoption. So there are no OLD textbooks to fall back on.

[savebigbird]

5. Not where I'm at...

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Not where I teach

It's actually more common to give teachers scripted curriculum and lesson plans. So they are writing fewer and fewer lesson plans.