<p>I can give you some inside information about this topic, because Pre-K through 12 textbook publishing was my former career.</p>
<p>School textbooks have definitely been dumbed-down to accommodate educational faddists, special interest groups, and like-minded politicos (serving on local school boards and state textbook adoption committees) who promote the idiotic notion that students benefit more when challenged less, and that K-12 textbooks should be entertaining rather than informative.</p>
<p>Textbook publishers have responded to the demand for garbage by producing garbage, because garbage sells. State textbook adoption competition is brutal. Each publisher wants its textbooks to make the cut, and will do whatever’s necessary to make its textbooks appealing to the heavy-hitter states of California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Texas. (Textbooks adopted by those states are likely to be considered for adoption in most other states.) In my former high-profile publishing company, “whatever’s necessary” included signing up politically correct and/or regionally influential “authors” and “consultants” who contributed little to their books other than their names. Most of our textbooks were written in-house by editorial staffers, some of whom either had no background in education, or no background in the academic subject for which they were writing. Most staffers had never written professionally prior to being hired. Several staffers even lacked a college degree. Editors often farmed out excess work to freelance writers with even lesser skills and experience. Meanwhile, the lofty “authors” dropped in just long enough to meet and greet, sign their high-figure contracts, and have a liquid lunch with the top brass. Then they went back to wherever they came from; we never saw and rarely heard from them again. </p>
<p>I am proud to say that my textbook publishing company didn’t produce garbage… back then. However, by the time my D started kindergarten in 1996, I had been out of textbook publishing for nearly ten years. I, too, was appalled by the sharp decline in K-12 textbook quality. I began supplementing my D’s school-assigned garbage textbooks with older, better-quality textbooks (and even with college-level textbooks) acquired from the public library, used bookstores, thrift shops, yard sales, and wherever else I could find them. (For those of you with children still in K-12, I recommend you do the same.) </p>
<p>If educational faddists continue to demand garbage textbooks, that’s exactly what the textbook publishers will produce. If there’s a demand for quality textbooks, the publishers will deliver.</p>