Are US schools required to provide students books to learn from?

Question

My niece is in a school in Minnesota and the majority of her grade is failing History. The school lost funding for being below state standards for 3 consecutive years even. When I started tutoring her I found out the class doesn't have any books. The teacher has a binder of chapter summary pages for each topic (IE: WWI) from 10 different history books dates 1989-2000 which she photocopies and hands out to the class. They supplement these random pages with past copies of Newsweek magazine. The information is so disjointed and inconsistent I had to sit down and teach her 5 hours of information to tie it all together.

My question is: Does anyone know if schools in America are required to provide books to the class for learning? None of her other classes have books either, just photocopies often referring the students back to the original textbooks for information.

ansmenam · Accepted Answer

Something doesn't sound right here.  Even if the school lost funding for 3 years, (I assume you are speaking about Federal funding.  The states should still fund each school.) what about the history books that they used 3 years ago?  I'd ask the administration where the books are. 

I've heard of certain schools not allowing the students access to books because they have, in the past, destroyed them.  They instead made xeroxed copies of pertinent readings and handed them out. I've also heard of the great leaders of the school system (lots of big wigs in the inner city school system here were imprisoned for stealing money from the school budget and buying themselves luxury autos, furs, etc) stealing from the very schools they were hired to improve.  Is your niece in a high crime, low graduation rate district? 

 Start by asking questions of the school's administration and if you don't get a satisfactory response, go to the Board of Education.  With as much tax money as is dumped into schools, no books is completely unacceptable.

Are US schools required to provide students books to learn from?

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