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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

I was talking to somebody about how education ends up being so expensive in the US, and I kind of feel like there are similar reasons.

Subcontracting out work + massive federalism creates $200 textbooks. Now I know national textbooks are a bit much, but I would be interested in seeing a state completely co-opt the textbook creation process and produce some textbooks and learning material at cost.

As for the budget distribution, this pretty much happens in other places too. My French school's expansion was half funded by the ministry of industry, some by the region, some by the national government... I think that's a side effect of how budgeting works.

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> Subcontracting out work + massive federalism

I think you meant massive anti-federalism.

If we had a federal procurement system for math and english textbooks, after being put out for a nationwide bid, the per-unit cost would be about 10% over the cost of paper and printing. (the 10% premium is the bid adjustment for a women or minority owned business)

Now $8 textbooks wouldn't save a lot of money compared to the national education budget, but it would be a good start. And do we really need regional variations in math textbooks?

The only reason I know of for different textbooks for different states is that some states seem to want to push a religious agenda in their education system. I struggle to find any net negatives here except for religious fundamentalists and textbook printers.

> The only reason I know of for different textbooks for different states is that some states seem to want to push a religious agenda

Until the federal government starts pushing a religious agenda. Then everyone here would want textbooks from, say, California.

This can't be the whole story. Consider math books. Publishers have coordinated math curriculums, perhaps a dozen different ones used across the country. I feel that the people picking these books are persuaded by the different book publishers to buy expensive, colorful math books that fundamentally are inferior to simpler, less costly math curriculum/books, like the math program and books used in Singapore (which are in English).

CommonCore is the Solution to these 20 different MATH text books across USA. 40 States are onborad with CommonCore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_In...

This gives the WHOLE Sotry .. How Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolution

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulle...

The only reason I know of for everyone using the same textbooks nationally is that some people seem to want to push an agenda in their education system, and see that as tool for doing so.

Using the same textbooks nationally has an obvious benefit of entire nation learning the same things. Standardization of the curriculum is not a bad thing.

Or let's do it like a bunch of other countries: children have the reaponsability of taking good care of the books and pass them to the next generation at the end of their class. It's a great way of teaching respect for the public good.

A yet better way would be to have these books as open-source and anyone is able to print them at their homes/public livrary/etc.

A classic story in local elections is that books are 20 years old and the system needs a millage to buy new books.

If you assume that a student uses ~10 books a year and that they last 10 years, with $200 books you get grade schools spending about $200 per student per year on books. If it's 20 books and 5 years, it's $800 per student per year.

So while there is probably an obvious opportunity for grade schools to save money on cheaper books, it's also pretty obvious that it isn't the main component of educational spending at that level (the high price scenario puts it at less than 10%).

I think things have gotten worse, but I probably only spent $1500 on books in college (and ~$40,000 on in state tuition). So that's a noticeable fraction, but it wasn't in any way something to worry much over compared to the total costs.

It's not a question of total costs so much as how cheap this would be to fix. The only real issue is text book manufactures like tax software company's have a huge impetus to maintain the current system.

Which is who the government wastes so much money outsourcing in the first place. It's all defused pain for personal gain.

I think the total costs inform how outraged to be. They are probably less than 5%, so if you permanently reduce them by 1/2, you've managed to offset ~1 year of cost inflation. That sort of scenario is not the first thing you address when you look for systematic ways to improve the effectiveness of spending (you of course try do them along the way, but they aren't worth burning much time or political capital on).

Inflation adjusted costs are not going up 2.5% a year. Further, I don't think there are many easy ways to save 2+% of total tuition spending.

> Or let's do it like a bunch of other countries: children have the reaponsability of taking good care of the books and pass them to the next generation at the end of their class. It's a great way of teaching respect for the public good.

This already happens in most primary schools because buying new copies every year is prohibitively expensive.

And do we really need regional variations in math textbooks?

Depends on if you trust the federal government to do a better job selecting a textbook than the state you currently live in.

Having seen how the Texas board of education works at adding creationist and revisionist junk to science and history text books, I absolutely trust the federal government to do a better job selecting a textbook than most states.

If a Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee presidency would change your opinion on federal control of education, perhaps you should reevaluate the underlying principles.

Realistically it's really whether you expect them to do a better job than major states like California and Texas. Nobody is producing a special Rhode Island edition of a textbook.

The federal government does not need to select those books.

It can merely create a few options (from the best professionals it can find on the entire federation), and make them available for the federated entities.

> do we really need regional variations in math textbooks?

I think there is value in having our population exposed to a diverse range of textbooks. I can't prove it, but I suspect that a homogenous education system would be detrimental to our economy. One of our national strengths is innovation, which comes partly from having a number of people looking at the same problem in different ways.

For history and social sciences absolutely.

For high school level Math, not really. The downside I can see is that you stifle any innovation in teaching methodology.

The issue would be deciding what was the "best" math book. There are some really crappy ones, at least in my opinion. Someone else would hold those same books up and say they were the best.

Right! You're exactly right. You want a great example, look to Texas. They are one of the big reasons we live in this nightmarish dystopian present of $200 textbooks that suck to begin with.

When I mentioned federalism, it was more about the fact that local and state governments have a lot of control on the education level. Usually meaning a lot of different kinds of books.

If we weren't a federal system, the national government would be dictating much more about education than it currently is.

The ultimate cause is regulator capture. A series of large companies extract massive rent through their ability to direct state funds into their coffers.

If the US as it exists now tried a Federal textbook, those would cost $200 again at the very least and would be put together by all the major textbook companies combined (unless one of managed a clever end-run). We see this in military contracting for example.

The capture is probably strongest at the State and Federal level just because centralization is easiest but these hand-down regulations that force the hand of local authorities - not controlling them entirely but preventing any tactics that cut-out the mass of rent seeking monopolies that now count on state funds for their sustenance.

> Now I know national textbooks are a bit much

We have an enormous federal Dpt. of Ed. but we don't have no-cost, open source curriculae, textbooks, school operations software etc. That's a damn shame. That kind of resource could transform education in non-affluent school districts.

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