This year I'm the co-chair of the math department at my school. I'm "transitioning in" to the position, while the other teacher, who has been the department chair for a few years now, is "transitioning out".
Part of the deal is that he fills me in on what I need to know about how to do all the things a department chair needs to do, and I'll go to all the meetings. Yesterday I attended the meeting of all the math department chairs from the secondary schools in my district.
The topic was brought up that many teachers are unhappy the adopted textbook for our "Integrated Math 1" course. Perhaps we need to get some teachers together and create or find some supplementary materials with which to augment that textbook. I chimed in to the district person running the meeting, "Just so I'm clear, are we freely and openly admitting that our textbook sucks?"
Admitting this would be a big deal. Our textbook adoption process is a joke. The restrictions under which we operate when choosing which books to pilot or adopt is a joke. Everything is a joke. And the results are less than optimal. It would be a big deal to admit that this major process is so broken that our district spent millions of dollars over the past couple years buying textbooks that are horrible.
The answer? "Yes."
I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I saw my nephew's middle school used a later version of Dolciani (1990) for algebra. He switched schools for high school, and I got to be thrilled again when his new school also uses Dolciani (1990) for algebra II.
ReplyDeleteBoth schools chose an old, out of print, non-flashy (and physically smaller) book, rather than use a modern one.
I love this video about algebra textbooks over time "Math Textbooks: Size Matters?":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wdVw8lcYBc