What are they thinking? » The way it is now
Twenty-one states, known as Adoption States, make up the critical market sought by textbook publishers. These states “adopt” a list of approved textbooks and buy those books for the students in the state schools, usually on a six-year cycle. If a publisher does not have its books on that list, it will have no sales in the state for that book for 5 to 6 years.1
Among these adoption states, three states wield enormous influence because together they spend about 25% of all the money spent on textbooks in the entire nation. These states are Texas, California, and Florida.2
Since publishers cannot afford to produce a textbook for every state and its unique criteria, each one creates a book that meets the criteria of the majority of its clients—which consists of the three key adoption states. As a result, the curriculum guidelines for California, Texas, and Florida dominate the scope and sequence of nearly all textbooks published by the four main publishers.
Texas has even more clout among the three dominant states because it allots a certain amount of money per year per student; and by law it must spend all of the allotted money. Publishers desperately want that guaranteed money, so they cater particularly to the Texas curriculum guide, known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).3 In fact, Tamim Ansary, an editor for nine years at one publishing house and a writer for the others at various times, claims that “TEKS describes what Texas wants and what the entire nation will get.”4
So the publishers want to satisfy Texas first, but they also need to meet the diverse requirements of Florida and California. And, of course, it is financially important to gain the market of New York and the other heavily populated states. So the publishers seek to align the textbooks with the curricular requirements of all of these states. To evaluate their success, they use correlational analysis, computerized keyword searches, and sometimes untrained reviewers to determine how well they comply with these state standards. Harriet Tyson, an education writer, researcher, and consultant, argues that these methods are “superficial,” “dysfunctional” and even “destructive” methods of judging the legitimacy of textbooks.5
The curriculum documents of Texas and the other two adoption states contain more “facts, topics, ideas, concepts, vocabulary, cognitive tasks, pedagogical features, and social imperatives”6 than could be effectively treated in any one text per grade level. By trying to make their books universally acceptable, publishers end up with watered-down content. They attempt to satisfy a variety of curricula demands through graphics and sidebars. The result is a “splintered vision” of what needs to be taught, books that some experts believe “lower the academic performance of students who spend years in such a learning environment.”7
Find out what an insider has to say about the agenda of secular textbook publishers.
1 For details on the adoption schedule for each state, see the Publishers Resource Group website.
2 For a detailed explanation of the significance of Adoption States, see Harriet Tyson, “Overcoming Structural Barriers to Good Textbooks,” 1997, and The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption, study conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Washington, DC, September 2004.
3 See http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/.
4 Tamim Ansary, “The Muddle Machine: Confessions of a Textbook Editor,” Edutopia (November 2004).
5 Harriet Tyson, “Overcoming Structural Barriers to Good Textbooks,” (1997).
6 Tyson
7 William H. Schmidt, Curtis C. McKnight, and Senta A. Raizen, “A Splintered Vision: An Investigation of U.S. Science and Mathematics Education,” Michigan State University: U.S. National Research Center for the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (1997).