In most states math education is completely fad driven. Textbook selection committees are usually staffed with people who do not understand the subject, and wh

In most states math education is completely fad driven. Textbook selection committees are usually staffed with people who do not understand the subject, and when domain experts are asked to donate their time to evaluate materials, their feedback is ignored as the only purpose of having them aboard was to apply to the dog and pony show evaluation proceedings a sheen of legitimacy. Textbook publishers spend millions each year wining and dining members of committees, providing them with gifts and trips and sometimes even setting them up with speaking fees that are a masked form of bribery and kickbacks. It's a well known problem and has been going on for decades. It's very similar to the way the pharmaceutical rep industry works. I strongly recommend everyone read "Judging Books by Their Covers" by Richard Feynman for his experience in the process, which remains the standard modus operandi to this day: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm As the editor's postscript to that article summarizes: "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." These dynamics are part of why I strongly oppose calls for national standardization, the streamlining and centralization of would lead to a much larger and more difficult to combat corruption as greasy palm edu-bureaucrats rake in the dough for selling out the country.