Educators often wonder exactly how the textbooks that end up in students' hands were approved. In this article, the author explores one significant stage in the process in California, the nation's largest textbook market. The Instructional Quality Commission (IQC), an advisory board to the California Department of Education's (CDE) State Board of…

New laws in California have set the state on a course for some potentially significant changes to the curriculum, including a measure that revisits the matter of teaching Algebra 1 in 8th grade and another that revamps the state's textbook-adoption process and hands districts greater leeway in choosing instructional materials. The algebra-related…

Textbooks are often a core element of curricula and delivery of classroom instruction and have long been a source of controversy. The textbook adoption process has become less about content and more about political/cultural pressure. Special-interest groups from the right and left exert enormous influence on textbook content through bias and…