news

Pretty much. And the voucher scam is what makes it so awful, they’re stealing our taxpayer dollars to institute segregation and lower the quality of education at the same time. Thanks GW Bush for pioneering that particular grift.

Doesn't Texas basically define the textbooks for the majority of US schools due to economies of scale?

Yeap.

Public education has always been a battleground between cultural forces; one reason that Texas’ school-board members find themselves at the very center of the battlefield is, not surprisingly, money. The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually.

[That] rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead.

Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with (which are referred to as TEKS — pronounced “teaks” — for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online —are still the backbone of education.

NYT article from 2010

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Rant

(1) Fuck google. I'm sick of its garbage results. My top result was a shitty lying article that said the opposite. (2) Fuck whoever polices the Wikipedia page for "Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills". The page was pointless garbage ~10 years ago and that's still true.