NYC schools stopped teaching books

When I was in elementary school, I thought teachers had it easy — they merely followed the chapters in the textbook. There was a coherent plan for teaching the material. The homework questions were already designed.

Now I see K-8 (maybe 9-12) schools have abandoned books in favor of YouTube videos, gluing stuff into notebooks, and online games. They buy iPad/chromebooks for each student every single year with the money saved from books.

One day, some of these kids will go to college and may encounter sliced tree fragments with lines on them. They won’t have “test reviews” and online games for “learning”.

How will they deal with that?

Every few years there's a new strategy in teaching reading. And we find out that the last strategy was totally wrong but not to worry--this one is based on science.

I know nothing about this topic, but it always seems like window dressing on some deeper issue. How the hell can half of kids not read?