Textbook Adoption Bad for All Concerned, Says Education Reform Group
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
October 11, 2004
(AgapePress) - A prominent education reform group is renewing its call for the demise of statewide textbook adoption.Twenty-one states across the nation either choose or recommend textbooks that their school districts can use. In such states, school districts using state money to buy books can only purchase those appearing on the state list. The remaining states, known as "open territory" states, allow districts to select any textbook they like.
The National Association of State Boards of Education says the century-old process of textbook adoption, which was originally intended to improve the quality of instructional materials, is now being "increasingly criticized for being too rigid, too politicized, and, ironically enough, stifling the production of better quality textbooks."
A new study by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation -- titled "The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption" -- bears out those criticisms, finding that the modern-day textbook adoption process has been captured by both right- and left-wing interest groups. The result, according to Fordham research director Justin Torres, is sensitivity and bias guidelines that constrain just about every facet of textbooks.
"For example, in California [a textbook-adoption state] not only do characters in literature anthologies have to be evenly divided between men and women ... if those characters are animals, the animals have to be evenly divided between male and female," Torres explains, offering the following illustration. "At one point, for example, a story in a reader from Jemimah Puddleduck was changed so that Jemimah became a boy."
The researcher adds that in states like California, Texas, and Florida, textbook adoption often leads to watered-down, politically correct content. "At a certain point there's a kind of Stockholm syndrome that takes over," he explains.
"Textbook publishers -- knowing what kinds of things are going to make the state object to textbook content -- have started to censor themselves," Torres says. "And that's really driven the process, not just in those 21 states, but in other states as well because even non-adoption states are still buying the same kinds of textbooks from the same four or five big companies."
Despite the original intentions behind the process, the bottom line, says the Fordham report, is that there is "no evidence that textbook adoption contributes to increased student learning." In fact, Torres notes that students in the 29 states without a textbook-adoption process tent to do very well on achievement tests.
The Fordham Foundation is calling for major reforms in the textbook-adoption process. Merely "tinkering" with the process, says the report, will not set it right. Torres believes those at the local level who know students best -- parents, teachers, and principals -- should be making decisions about textbooks.
