In the US, at the k-12 level, the school buys the textbook, not the teacher. The books are owned by the school, rented to the student, and used by several students over several years. Teachers turn over quickly, however, and so it would be quite costly if each time a new teacher starts teaching a course, the school has to buy a new set of books.
The increased costs of producing textbooks for every preference show up as acquisition costs, and the schools are reluctant to pay those costs simply to satisfy the preferences of teachers who might not be there next year or who might change their minds.
A student can choose whether to go to school A or B. I’m not opposed to schools making decisions about what to teach at school level.
It might be even good if it’s general knowledge that students who go to school A get taught from the Bayesian statistics handbook while school B rather teaches math like calculus.
Schools should be free to develop profiles of what they want to teach because of what they consider to be useful for students to learn.
How much freedom a specific school gives individual teachers can be up to the school.
I think that when a school makes a decision to buy a particular textbook it has a lot to do with what kind of textbook the teachers at that school find helpful.
I think that if a school buys textbooks based on what a bureaucrat thinks instead of based on what the teachers who interact with the students on a direct basis think, that’s bad for education.
In the US, at the k-12 level, the school buys the textbook, not the teacher. The books are owned by the school, rented to the student, and used by several students over several years. Teachers turn over quickly, however, and so it would be quite costly if each time a new teacher starts teaching a course, the school has to buy a new set of books.
The increased costs of producing textbooks for every preference show up as acquisition costs, and the schools are reluctant to pay those costs simply to satisfy the preferences of teachers who might not be there next year or who might change their minds.
A student can choose whether to go to school A or B. I’m not opposed to schools making decisions about what to teach at school level.
It might be even good if it’s general knowledge that students who go to school A get taught from the Bayesian statistics handbook while school B rather teaches math like calculus.
Schools should be free to develop profiles of what they want to teach because of what they consider to be useful for students to learn. How much freedom a specific school gives individual teachers can be up to the school.
I think that when a school makes a decision to buy a particular textbook it has a lot to do with what kind of textbook the teachers at that school find helpful.
I think that if a school buys textbooks based on what a bureaucrat thinks instead of based on what the teachers who interact with the students on a direct basis think, that’s bad for education.