Bye-Bye Textbooks, Hello Improvement

At Woodlawn Elementary School in St. Petersburg, Fla., teachers were fed up with seeing their students perform poorly in math class. Instead of giving up or continuing what had obviously not been working, they got creative and rewrote the math curriculum. Part of the restructuring included throwing their textbooks in the closet and never looking back.

This week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief story highlights the changes educators made in their curriculum to boost scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). By tossing out the textbooks, focusing on reading and writing, and creating games and group activities, teachers saw their students' test scores go from a D average to a B average in a short amount of time. The educators attributed this success to trying new things that provided them opportunities for higher engagement with the students as opposed to just teaching from textbook day in and day out.

Do you feel educators would be more effective if they were not tied down to teaching only from a textbook? What benefits do you see in removing textbooks from the classroom?