I remember when, 25 years ago I was a second grade teacher in then changing South Central Los Angeles. One of the first things that I had my face shoved in was the corporate text book ‘advisors’ or “consultants’ that would come to our school and tell us how to use their corporate texts and accompanied packets. As a new bilingual educator the whole thing felt like a sordid condominium time share sale, with soporific matchstick men droning on and on about how to use a textbook.
Later, as I began to teach first grade, I found the proliferation of text book companies and their products in my class room became so large I had to store the costly junk curriculum and phony student packets in storage lockers in my classroom.
Now the situation has become even worse. For with new regulations for more rigorous teacher evaluations,
