Website of the Month

www.coreknowledge.org

The Core Knowledge Foundation’s website offers parents and teachers model elementary and middle school curricula that can help children establish strong foundations of knowledge. Their well-organized website gives parents rigorous, but reasonable guidelines for what their children should learn in each grade.

For more helpful education-focused websites, surf over to the Center for Education Reform’s website at www.edreform.com.

Textbooks Riddled With Errors: Do you know what your children are reading?

Four years ago in a small Pennsylvania town a seventh-grade girl happened upon a homework problem that stumped her. She asked her dad for help and he, too, was puzzled.

When his research showed that the problem incorrectly described a scientific law, the father wrote to the publisher, Prentice Hall, to point out the error. While waiting six weeks for a response, he started to jot down other mistakes he found. In that time he compiled 34 pages of mistakes!

One experience helping his daughter with her homework lead Howard Lyon to a network of people who evaluate the textbooks used in every school in the country. William Bennetta edits a newsletter called The Textbook League, out of California, which reviews middle school and high school textbooks. He says that of the 300 or more he has reviewed "at least 75% have been so blatantly incompetent that I could say, with certainty, that the people who wrote them had no idea what they were writing about." In fact, many of the famous "authors" listed on the cover of textbooks do little more than outline topics for books; the actual writing and editing is done by committees of people who really do not know a lot about the subject matter.
Many education observers point out that American textbooks tend to be too broad-and too shallow. In an effort to please everyone and offend no one, editors continually water down content until textbooks are superficial and dull. Publishers make up for lackluster content with flashy graphics, photos and additional materials like CD ROMs and Workbooks. Since most consumers, teachers and school boards, assume the information inside is accurate, they choose new textbooks for their students primarily based on packaging.

Inaccurate and insubstantial textbooks create a problem for concerned parents. What can you do to check the quality of the textbooks that your child is using? A little research. Recently, various educational organizations have published rigorous evaluations of popular textbooks and ranked them in order of content and usability. For example, Mathematically Correct, a California-based group, has thorough reviews of math books posted on their web site (www.mathmaticallycorrect.com). According to their findings, SRA/McGraw Hill's series Math: Explorations and Applications is the only major math program effectively preparing eighth-graders for algebra. As for guidelines for other subjects, a Virginia-based, national organization, The Core Knowledge Foundation, has published a series of books titled What Your Kindergartner, First-Grader, Second-Grader, etc. Needs to Know. These books can be found in most bookstores or ordered from The Core Knowledge Foundation web site (www.coreknowledge.org). Teachers can find guidance in History and recommended Humanities textbooks by calling the American Textbook Council in New York City (email atc@columbia.edu).

Textbooks do matter. Help assure your child is exposed to accurate and richly detailed materials!

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