Many states have curriculum framework standards. Textbook companies
write their books based primarily on standards from California,
Texas, and Florida. They try to write books that will meet the
standards in those three states. If they get a book or program
adopted, especially in elementary language and/or other early
development programs in just one state, they can break even, and
leverage that win to adoption in smaller states. From there, it's all
gravy. The K-12 textbook sector is a $6-7B enterprise. Margins are
pretty good.
It's not rocket science to write a book that conforms to standards,
but it *does* take discipline. The irony is that so may people in
open source are extraordinarily creative types, so writing to a
"standard" can seem a burden. That said, writing to these standards
is the ONLY way to get past peer review, and get a book or program
materials recommended on a list of valid choices for adoption.
It's also important to realize that writing a book for elementary
education - like a language development book - is a HUGE undertaking.
It's better to start with something for high school, because the
process by which high school books are adopted is less demanding.
Something like this really needs critical mass, and MUST be managed,
like any other project.
Here are the California State Department of Education Curriculum
Frameworks
http://www.csun.edu/~hcbio027/k12standards/
Cheers,
Sanford
***************************************
Sanford Forte, Director
California Open Source Texbook Project
Palo Alto, CA
http://www.opensourcetext.org
On Oct 24, 2006, at 4:59 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
I do have the attitude that the volunteers at
Wikibooks have the
capability of creating the kinds of textbooks that you are looking
for,
Jimbo. And that other than recruiting more talented wordsmiths we
can
pull off the kinds of ground breaking shifts in the textbook
publication
industry that have only been hinted at so far.
I agree with this completely of course. I don't know how it can
happen,
but a part of what needs to happen is that Wikibooks needs to really
encourage people to make use of the existing frameworks... Sanford can
probably help us by pointing out where to find them on the web, etc.,
and by being here to help start making the right kind of noises to get
them adopted, at least in California, which is one place to start.
--Jimbo
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