Since California, Texas, and Florida account for 25 percent of book purchases, the major publishers regularly develop new texts around these states' needs, then adapt them slightly, at low cost, for others. According to researchers, these texts and the accompanying teachers' guides, along with standardized tests such as the Stanford Achievement Test, have enormous influence over classroom instruction across the country. If, as some analysts suggest, the result is a de facto national curriculum, the real question may be whether it is any good. Thanks in part to efforts to improve school standards, there's broad professional consensus on what topics should be taught when. Just about everyone, for example, teaches addition and subtraction in first grade, division in third.
Critics find the situation less benign.
Like most government contracting, text buying has also seen its share of scandal. California faced an uproar in the 1980s, when publishers treated book-buying bureaucrats to plush golf weekends and moonlight yacht cruises. Recent evidence suggests critics are right to worry that today's standards aren't high enough. In the well-regarded Third International Mathematics and Science Study, for example, U.S. fourth graders scored above world averages in math, only to dip below average by eighth grade. Many educators attribute the drop to curricula and texts that cover twice as many topics in less depth than, say, Japan.