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Texas Narrowly Rejects Allowing Academics To Fact-Check Public School Textbooks (csmonitor.com)
jriding writes with news that in a 8-7 vote the Texas State Board of Education rejected a plan to create a group of state university professors to fact-check textbooks approved for the state's 5.2 million public-school students. The CS Monitor reports: "The Board of Education approves textbooks in the nation's second-largest state and stood by its vetting process — despite a Houston-area mother recently complaining that a world geography book used by her son's ninth grade class referred to African slaves as 'workers.' The publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, apologized and moved to make immediate edits."
In his subjectively honest autobiography "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", Richard Feynman devotes a chapter (Judging Books by Their Covers) to this and related issues in textbooks. The truth of the matter is the books go mostly un-reviewed. Sure, they hire teams of committees to review them, but more likely than not, nobody on any committee so much as opens them up, much less fact-checks them. They are however lavished with free dinners, vacations, and other graf. The book deals are worth millions, after all.
He recounts when he was on such a committee and was unable to get a criticism in edgewise.
Now, add some religion, politics and general bureaucratic incompetence to that and what you end up with is an all but worthless textbook and a keen hope for a teacher that can teach around it.
Meh. My kids are grown and gone. I wish them luck.
And with the Charter schools it becomes a vicious cycle.
1. Charter school takes public school money.
2. Charter school only takes in "good" students (e.g. not kids with low grades or with difficulties that would require extra assistance).
3. Students with "difficulties" are left in the public schools who have less money to help them.
4. Charter schools get better test scores than public schools. (Since they get to pick and choose not only what students they take but what test results they publish.)
5. Businesses that run charter schools profit and donate money to politicians.
6. Politicians call for more charter schools and to close public schools.
7. Repeat 1 - 6.
Unfortunately, we're seeing this in action in NY and it's not pretty.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Actually capitalism comes out really badly in many sectors when looked at from an economics point of view. Particularly natural monopolies (eg: utilities), or where there is no real competition (eg: emergency heath services).