By V. Dion Haynes and Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 24, 2006; B08
D.C. school officials will delay the implementation of portions of science and social studies standards because the school system will not have the necessary textbooks when school opens Monday.
Superintendent Clifford B. Janey is introducing science and social studies standards intended to guide sweeping changes in instruction by specifying what students in every grade should know. Officials had planned to order hundreds of thousands of textbooks so every student would have instructional material aligned with the new standards.
Although the standards were approved in February and June, the system has neither adopted nor ordered the textbooks. Now, school officials say the new books will not be introduced until the 2007-2008 school year.
Janey said he postponed buying the books for a year because he was concerned that they would not arrive in time for school. Last year, shipments of new language arts and mathematics textbooks arrived at some schools several months late.
In the meantime, Janey said, teachers will use current textbooks and incorporate new material into their lesson plans and add field trips to history and science museums.
"They're not huge gaps" between the new standards and old textbooks, Janey said in an interview yesterday. "It's not like the textbooks will be the sole deliverer of quality instruction. . . . The power of the textbooks comes out in the quality of teaching."
Nevertheless, officials decided that sixth- and seventh-graders should continue using the old social studies standards for another year.
Social studies teachers said it would be too difficult under the new standards to switch instructional emphasis this year without the textbooks and supporting material.
In sixth grade, the emphasis would change from the Eastern Hemisphere to world culture and geography and in seventh grade from Western European history to the ancient world and world geography, said Wilma F. Bonner, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
School officials said they are seeking to address the long-standing problem of late textbook deliveries by overhauling the procurement process. They shifted all duties associated with ordering textbooks from Chief Academic Officer Hilda L. Ortiz to Thomas M. Brady, the chief business operating officer, placed bar codes on 1 million textbooks and workbooks in the warehouse and schools for better tracking and installed a computer system to provide instant information on inventory and orders.
As a result, officials expressed confidence yesterday that no student would start the school year without textbooks. Janey said he will be able to certify to the Board of Education in late September that every student has a book for all core subjects, as required by D.C. law.
"Our goal and our plan is [to avoid experiencing] a problem with students not getting a textbook," said Chief Procurement Officer Kevin Green, adding that the system has amassed a surplus of textbooks to replace books that were or will be lost or damaged. "We don't want any surprises."
But Erich Martel, a history teacher at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, who helped draft the social studies standards, said he disagreed with the decision to delay the new standards for sixth- and seventh-graders. "The kids now in seventh grade who don't get the first step will not be fully prepared for two years later when they go into the next sequence in ninth grade," he said.
In July 2005, school officials ordered 450,000 math and language arts textbooks for the 2005-06 school year, which began in late August. On the first day of school, Janey declared the textbook effort a success, saying schools had received 95 percent of the orders. He stood by that statement into October, when some teachers complained that students still had not received books.
In December, Janey and other officials acknowledged the widespread delays in shipments after The Washington Post published reports about the shortage and D.C. Auditor Deborah K. Nichols announced that she was investigating. The school board directed Janey to conduct an audit, which largely blamed a paper-based tracking system for the problem.
The board probably will adopt the new science and social studies textbooks in December, and school officials will place the orders in January, said Vice President Carolyn N. Graham. The school system, she said, would then have eight months to secure the books.
Janey said he has established a procedure for students, teachers and parents to report problems with textbooks. Complaints, he said, should be directed to the school board's administrative assistants, who would forward them to Janey's chief of staff, Peter Parham.
