Williams Act
remains roadblock for digital transition

BY BRIAN NUEVO
[email protected]

Several teachers at Roseville High School have been making moves away from textbook use in their classrooms and implementing alternative resources for teaching materials.

Still, the Williams Act, a “Superior Court case to provide all students equal access to instructional materials, safe schools and quality teachers,” requires states to update and purchase textbooks for every course, according to the California Department of Education.

However, the downstairs 900s hallway houses piles of unused textbooks, and has for years.

While the district continues to spend money on textbooks, many of the other electronic resources – such as current event articles, sample math problems, supplemental notes, online stories, tutorial and documentary videos – are available to teachers at no monetary expense.

“Everytime we buy textbooks, [teachers] always ask if there is a digital resource. Until there is a change in the Williams Act we’re sort of stuck,” Roseville Joint Union High School District superintendent Ron Severson said.

For example, Oakmont High School Spanish teacher Clarice Swaney doesn’t use textbooks at all and uses other resources, such as stories and videos to teach students rather than using the textbooks.

“We agreed that we would cover the info by way of stories,” Swaney said.

Swaney enjoys newer resources such as current events to help students relate to what’s going on.

“We try to find more newer, relevant type articles that show some of the themes we are exploring connect to people’s lives more currently,” Swaney said.

While many teachers, including many English teachers at Roseville High School have mostly or entirely abandoned the use of textbook, not everyone is ready to completely move away from them.

RHS principal David Byrd isn’t quite ready to entirely condemn the use of textbooks.

“I’m not ready to say textbooks are a waste and we need to stop buying them but we’re transitioning and looking at it, before we buy anything let’s make sure there’s a better way to do this,” Byrd said.

Byrd encourages exploration into more convenient and accurate options rather than textbooks.

“The reality of teaching is where, I believe, we don’t want to live in a world with just a textbook and base everything off the textbook,” Byrd said. “I think if we don’t encourage our teachers to experiment a little bit then were never going to find what’s better than that textbook option.”

Government and United States History teacher Shane Harvey looks to use online resources and use the textbook as a resource guide rather than as a core teaching tool.
“I try to bring outside stuff to the class,” Harvey said. “I use it more as some support material more than not.”

Harvey thinks that students will learn better from more current events which can be found online rather than older and less relevant events found in textbooks. He believes that rather than have them opening up their textbooks in class, being able to discuss current events makes learning more “fun and interactive.”

“It’s just a little more fun when we can actually talk about the topics and have discussions and activities, compared to traditional take out your book and turn to page 270,” Harvey said.

Spanish 1 and ELD teacher Curt Hobbs uses more workbooks and and worksheets and looks to the textbook only as a resource for help.

“I use the workbooks, core worksheets to supplement the textbook learning.” Hobbs said.

Hobbs uses websites with vocabulary and reading comprehension to help teach students and supply worksheets for practice, instead of relying on lessons from textbook chapters.

“If they want to work on reading comprehension, I use University of Texas, as far as practice study spanish, What I try to do is supply a lot of supplements to help,” Hobbs said.