Now that Washington state has new Mathematics standards, OPSI will be moving on to textbook selection. For those who don’t know how textbook selection is done, we link to “Judging Books by Their Covers” which appeared as a chapter in “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”. In this essay, Richard Feynman relates his experiences reviewing mathematics textbooks for California’s Curriculum Commission. Unfortunately, little has changed since 1964 and states still stage sham textbook reviews. Also interesting are the editors comments at the end:
As a rule, however, state agencies don’t want legitimate evaluations of the textbooks that publishers submit for adoption, because the agencies are allied with the publishers. The adoption proceedings staged by these agencies are not designed to help school districts, to protect students, or to serve the interests of taxpayers. Rather, they are designed to serve the interests of the publishers, to generate approvals and certifications for the publishers’ books, and to help the publishers sell those books to local schools.
