Jimmy Wales wrote in part:
Magnus Manske wrote:
So far, in Germany the state paid for all the books in school. Just today, it was announced that due to Germany's financial sorta crisis, the parents will have to pay for the books in the future. Too bad there's no free source for such books...
In public schools in the U.S. up through high school, books are generally provided. In all states? In most states? I don't know for sure.
In most (if not all) States, they're generally provided. Whether they're up to date and in good shape, and whether there are enough for each individual student (so they don't have to trade off who gets to take the book home), well these matters will depend on the available funding.
I get the impression from Magnus' post that in Germany, the funding of textbooks is done on a national level. (Not /some/ parents, but /all/ parents, due to a /national/ fiscal crisis.) Of course, the US does these things at a State level. But the funding of textbooks is in many (most? all?) States is in fact a /local/ budgetary decision; so you may see neighbouring districts in the same State (county, city) with very different funding levels for all sorts of things.
Partly, this is because of our traditional reliance on locally collected taxes, generally property taxes. School districts here are chartered by their States to collect taxes within their boundaries to fund themselves. The idea is to give the districts a measure of autonomy, by not making them dependent on the State government for funds. But another result is that the funds available to a district depend heavily on the wealth of the property owners there; poor districts have poor books, and rich districts have good books. Also, since districts in most (all?) States now supplement the property tax with a great deal of State funding, and even take a small but significant amount of national funding, the goal of financial independence is pretty much shot anyway.
That's why the national government is able to require (say) national standards testing or gender equality in sports without a direct mandate from the Constitution to regulate local schools; they simply put that clause into the funding bill, and the local districts can either comply or do without. (Well, that's how they get the Supreme Court to swallow it, at least. I don't intend to try to /justify/ such legal chicanery.)
-- Toby