SACRAMENTO, CA -- Five years ago, I authored a study that, among other things, compared how much the state spent on desegregation, special education, bilingual education, and other special interest programs versus how much was spent on classroom instructional materials (i.e., textbooks, etc.). In each comparison, classroom instructional materials received significantly less funding.

Things haven't changed since that study was published. In 1996-97, the state allocated $157 million to its classroom instructional materials program. In comparison, the state spent $1.8 billion on special education, $771 million on class-size reduction, $545 million on desegregation, $516 million on various preschool child development programs, and $366 million on economic impact aid (from which bilingual education money is drawn).

In my previous study, I reported that a local Sacramento-area teacher was shocked that there was not a single textbook for any of the children in her classes. She told me that without texbooks she could not assign homework and could not refer to text materials in her lessons.

Guess what? Given the continued skewed spending priorities in the state education budget, massive textbook shortages continue to plague school districts across California. In a recent front-page story in the Los Angeles Times, reporter Amy Pyle documents the frustration of teachers, parents, and students over the abysmal lack of classroom textbooks. Ms. Pyle found students who spent valuable classroom time reading and copying from shared sets of class textbooks; students with history textbooks published in 1971; and parents forced to buy textbooks for their children. As one parent ruefully observed, "There'd be assignments that required books, but no book."

Federal, state, and local officials share the blame for California's textbook shortage. Through their special-interest categorical programs, Washington and Sacramento have forced local districts to spend education dollars according to distant priorities, and not according to local needs. The Times notes that the principal at Fremont high school in Los Angeles has discretionary control over less than $3 million out of a $17 million school budget. According to the Times, "there is abundant money for anti-poverty programs and bilingual programs -- none of which can be spent on textbooks."

Local school officials, however, have hurt students by funneling the discretionary money they do control into salaries and benefits of teachers and other district personnel rather than into textbooks. The Times article, for example, points out that 87 percent of Los Angeles Unified's classroom expenditures goes into salaries and benefits.

What to do? Turning state categorical programs into block grants to local schools would give local officials the opportunity to put more money into textbook acquisition. Also, since charter schools have greater freedom to be innovative with their funding, the cap on the number of charter schools should be lifted. Finally, school vouchers would not only allow students to escape a public education system that is shortchanging them, they would also put competitive pressure on the system to improve. Without such pressure, don't expect things to change.

-Lance T. Izumi