ABSTRACT
Of roughly $1 billion expended by elementary schools on textbooks and related materials in 1986, some 43.6 percent was spent on reading instructional materials, more than twice the total dollars expended in elementary school mathematics (16.6%). Much less was expended on elementary social studies (7%), elementary science and health (8.6%), elementary language arts (8.9%), and spelling (7.1%). Indeed, reading and language arts, when combined with spelling and literature, account for about 60 percent of the instructional dollars, just as totallanguage arts teaching dominates instructional time throughout the first six years of schooling (AAP, 1987, F-4). And these totals do not include expenditures for library books, newspapers, and other materials not directly associated with reading instruction.
