It's worth considering that in the US any lesson plans or teaching methods that are perceived as being "government-backed" are dead in the water, as they must b

It's worth considering that in the US any lesson plans or teaching methods that are perceived as being "government-backed" are dead in the water, as they must be commie anti-christian plots to undermine American values of self-sufficiency and independence. This is one of the problems that Common Core is now encountering: it's being spun as a government program. It is in fact something a bunch of states put together for themselves. Lesson plans from big companies like Pearson, on the other hand, are good because they come from businesses. However, there's a conflict of interest because many of the same companies write the exams. Worst of all, none of these companies actually develop teachers' abilities to teach. That's not really the fault of the companies; we just don't do that here in the US. Teacher development is almost nil for a lot of K-12 teachers in the US, compared to Japan or Finland. The average US teacher is in the classroom 1080 hours a year and it's something like 600 in Japan and Finland. That 480-hr-per-year difference is spent on development and prep. And yet there are a lot of really excited and entrepreneurial teachers and they're making and sharing all sorts of material. See TeachersPayTeachers, for instance.