NEW YORK - In his three years teaching in New York City public schools, Maurice Ducoing has spent hundreds of dollars of his own money buying books and copying papers for his students.

This is the first year he has had enough social studies textbooks. But he needs more workbooks for his students. And while he's at it, he could use a new thesaurus. He said the one the school provides doesn't even include the word “happy.”

“It can be a very disillusioning and disconcerting situation,” said the 24-year-old teacher at Luisa Dessus Cruz Middle School in the Bronx.

It is a refrain heard in many parts of the nation's largest school system: There simply aren't enough textbooks or workbooks, and what is available is often outdated or otherwise flawed.

Textbook shortages and upkeep appear to be a problem in urban and poor rural districts nationwide, but there's not much data collected on the subject, said Arnold Fege, director of public engagement and advocacy for the Public Education Network, an umbrella organization of educational support groups.

One attempt to size up the problem came in 2002, when the National Education Association and the Association of American Publishers surveyed 1,000 teachers across the country on textbooks. Nearly one out of three teachers said they didn't have enough textbooks to allow all students to take a book home.

In New York, the true extent of the problem is unknown and, for the most part, untracked.

City Council Member Eva Moskowitz, who chairs the education committee, has heard so many complaints about book and copy paper shortages that she held a recent hearing on the two subjects.

Moskowitz, a frequent critic of the city's Department of Education, blasted its representatives for what she said were shortfalls, especially in poorer schools.

Those representatives emphasized the department is investing more in textbooks. They said spending on “printed materials” has jumped to $151 million in fiscal year 2005 from $93.5 million in fiscal year 2001.