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The Actual Cost of Cursive in Illinois

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Last week the Illinois House passed new legislation that would mandate that cursive is taught in schools across Illinois. This comes during the same time that they cannot pass a budget, for two years running . This got me thinking of the question "at what cost does cursive come at?" So I have attempted to estimate and cost it out. The two major variables for hard costs are materials and professional development. Handwritten cursive requires consumable workbooks. A common set of materials for teaching cursive, which typically occurs in 3rd grade, is the  Zaner-Bloser Handwriting series , which comes at a cost of $11.69 per student. According to the Illinois Report Card  we have averaged 152,545 third graders each year over the past five years. This gives you a cost of student materials of $1,783,246 for the first year,   and for every year after that . Many schools haven't been teaching cursive for a while, so we would have to coach up our teachers, modify daily sch