SUMMARY:

            This bill would amend Chapter 2 of Title 20 of the O.C.G.A. to require the SBOE to establish a comprehensive website for teachers providing access to state standards and teaching resources and to require that state approved textbooks be aligned with state standards and to require local systems to provide teacher editions of textbooks.

REQUIREMENTS:

• The bill would require that the SBOE website that provides the state standards in each subject area and lesson plans be printable by July 1, 2009.
• The bill would require that every approved textbook address at least 80% of the competencies required in the standards and prohibits approval of any textbook that does not meet that criteria..
• The bill requires that each local school system provide or make available teacher’s editions of each textbook used by the system.

NOTES:

• The website that would be mandated already exists.
• A textbook aligned that closely to the new mathematics curriculum may not be published at this point.
• Educational leaders have been working for years to find ways to keep the publishing companies from driving the curriculum in the state and to encourage teachers to use the curriculum frameworks of the state and local system to plan lessons that use textbooks as resources, not as an easy way out to plan lessons for them without considering the content, the learning styles of the students, and the teaching style of the instructor.  This requirement would set that initiative back considerably.