The Actual Cost of Cursive in Illinois
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 dail...