improving textbooks -- some modest proposals

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

John Clement wrote:
....
> I just
> talked to a teacher involved in a district adoption process and the question
> of the accuracy of the text was never questioned.

Could we please have the next level of detail on this?
Did this teacher realize that accuracy was an issue?
 -- If not, why not?
 -- If so, why wasn't it questioned?
 -- What was the supposed purpose of the process, if
    not to question such things?
 -- In any case, what can be done differently next time?
    (See below for some modest proposals.)




Meanwhile, Chris Horton wrote:
...
> vital public interests are at stake.

I agree with that!

> This clearly is an area where the marketplace has failed completely

That is true as far as it goes, but it's not the
whole story.  We need to understand _why_ the marketplace
failed.  Here are some thoughts along that line:

Every market requires a buyer and a seller.  There
have been many studies documenting the errors of the
book-sellers.  But what about the buyers?  If the
buyers were smarter, the sellers would wise up in a
big hurry.

So my theory is that the marketplace has failed for
political reasons.  Legislatures impose foolish
requirements for political reasons.  District boards
interpret these requirements in foolish ways for
political reasons.  At this point, the book-sellers
have no choice but to offer a book that meets the
foolish requirements.  Low-level boards have no
choice but to adhere to the requirements, and book-
sellers follow suit.

> Educating the public might help but
> will probably take a generation.

Educating the public is important.
There may be ways to do it in much less than
a generation; see below.

> In the meantime we are fighting against
> the lobbying power of the textbook companies in the statehouses.
>
> I hate to suggest this because I hate to have bureaucrats telling me what I
> can or can't to, but this is a classic case of a situation where Federal
> regulation is called for.

Hang on a minnit.  What reason is there to assume
that federal regulation will succeed where state
regulation has failed?

To repeat:  AFAICT the marketplace has failed for
political reasons.  Federalization just replaces one
kind of politics with another.

Lobbying in congress is just as corrosively corrupt as
lobbying in the statehouses.  Indeed because the scale
is larger, it gives a yet-bigger advantage to the big
players.

I predict the following:
 -- In the short run, federal regulation would make
    the worst-case situations better.
 -- In the short run, it would make the best-case
    situations worse.
 -- In the long run, it would greatly increase the
    viscosity, making it much harder to make progress,
    making the long-term outcome much much worse.


> What kind of government regulation would produce the desired results here,
> and where the voice of the educators will outweigh that of the book mill
> owners?

That's a good question, but again, it's not the whole
story.  We need to understand all the forces involved.
The book-sellers are _not_ in sole control of the
process.  They have _failed_ to get what they really
want.

Book-sellers win if they get the widest possible adoption
of their product.  If all the jurisdictions demanded better
books, the sellers would provide better books immediately.

One force (not the only force) involved is that legislatures
have tried to impose some "objectivity" by decreeing what
topics must be covered.  One can objectively check whether
each topic is covered.  It is harder to check whether it
is covered well.  These checklists differ from jurisdiction
to jurisdiction, so the publishers have every incentive to
make their books a mile wide and a micron deep, to accomodate
all these checklists.

This is an unintended consequence of the legislature's
action.  Nobody wanted this.

Here is modest proposal #1:  Each jurisdiction shall
adopt at _least_ two different textbooks in each subject.
Initially, choose a 50/50 mixture if no solid information
justifies another proportion.  Each year,
the teachers in the subject will say which textbook they
prefer.  Presumably the preferences won't exactly match
the supplies, so hold a draft, like a simplified version
of the annual football draft.  Each teacher draws a random
number.  Low-numbered participants get to pick whichever book
they want.  The last few participants get stuck with
whatever's left.

Upgrade the draft to an auction, if some teachers have
stonger preferences than others.  But don't get carried
away; the details don't matter much.

Each year, I figure 10% of the books are worn out or
lost or whatever.  Replace them with appropriate books
(or mixture of books) so as to minimize the regret at
the draft/auction.

After a verrry small number of years, the supplies will
come into equilibrium with what the teachers want.  If
a small percentage of the teachers want to experiment
with a new book, they can do so.

In any case, no matter how good the most-popular book
is, at least 10% of the classrooms will be required to
use something else.  Think of it as a mandatory
continual experiment.  (Given the innate independent-
mindedness of typical teachers, it will be probably
never be necessary to take any action to enforce this
requirement.)

The elected officials retain some control, because they
can veto any book that seems grossly inappropriate.  And
of course they retain control at the other end of the
system, by means of the standardized tests.

====

Book-sellers might say that this would drive up costs by
shortening their production runs.  There used to be a grain
of truth in that, but it gets less and less true as time goes
by. Publishing technology has improved.  Even a small percentage
of the textbook market is such a huge number that great
economies of scale already apply.  Demanding a yet-larger
market is just lily-gilding.

==================

There is a fundamental political-science problem involved
here.  Teachers have got a lot to do.  Parents have got
a lot to do.  Students have got no voice at all.  Nobody
is seriously devoted to looking after the best interests
of the principal stakeholders.

I am _not_ a skilled politician, but it seems obvious to
my little brain that direct political action is called for.
Here is a hypothetical line of attack.  I'm not claiming
it's the best line of attack, but it might serve as the
starting point for a discussion.

Hypothesis:  Start a textbook PAC.  That's right, a political
action committee.  Hire somebody whose job it is to deal with
this issue.  One full-time person is incomparably more effective
than thousands of people spending 1/1000th of their time on
the issue.  Take out "issue ads" during campaigns.  Lobby
lawmakers and tell them if they don't clean up the textbook
adoption rules, we will oppose them for re-election.  Identify
candidates who are on the good side of the issue and support
them.  Maybe sponsor single-issue candidates in selected
races.  (The health-care issue worked for Senator Wellstone.)

Get teachers to donate to the PAC.  Get a few public-interest
foundations to donate.  I'll bet you could even get texbook
publishers to donate;  I suspect they don't like the existing
system any more than we do.

Just evaluating specific books has negligible impact.  Just
writing one or two letters to the school board whining about
particular books has negligible impact.  Serving on a committee
has negligible impact, if the committee doesn't have discretion
to deal with the real issues.

Maybe this PAC should be a subsidiary of the NEA.  That
would require some changes at the NEA;  their past efforts
in this area have been pretty uninspired.
http://www.google.com/search?q=texbook+OR+textbooks+site%3Anea.org