As a teacher, you should know the answer to this one … but I’ll reiterate.

Textbooks are essentially controlled by three companies therefore there is little to no competition AND only two states buy the majority of the books, Texas and California.

Here’s a very interesting article on the problem:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12705167/

However, I hope that YOU use better wording and grammar in your classroom than you did in this question!

Alan, good for you for doing what is necessary to succeed in your science class. Too many teachers are forced to teach subjects that they neither like or are trained for. Have you ever heard the expression that a teacher need only stay one chapter ahead of his or her students? It isn’t true of course, but if you’re teaching a subject that you are not trained for, well, there you are. All of this is unhelpful to students. One big problem with the education system in the US is that it is impossible to get rid of a bad teacher. And you already know who suffers. Ask a lot of girls and you may hear similar comments about their math teachers. Back in the old days, there used to be an expression — “Those who can -do; Those who can’t – teach.” That isn’t heard so much anymore, but we pay our teachers lousy salaries and some find they just struggle too much financially to stay in the profession. I was an engineer, and when I graduated college, my starting salary was higher than what a teacher made at the end of his or her career. Pretty sad. I wish I could tell you that every instructor or professor in college was outstanding, but it’s not the case either. Stay the great person you are and fill in where the instruction is not forthcoming and you’ll do great in whatever career you choose. And back to the present, if you keep reading your science text book and understand what is in front of you, you’ll do just fine come exam time, too.

Wow. I think the Americans have “watered” down the education system to some extent. Books you guys use are way easier to understand but they carry less information than the ones we use here in the caribbesn. You as a teacher has tthe power to do something about those poor text book then they will start to manufacture better ones. THINK THINK THINK.

They have so many mistakes, so many sentences are poorly worded, many case studies are inappropriately chosen, and sometimes they have outright propaganda within them. American textbooks are complete trash. Go for a Canadian, or maybe European textbook, stay away from the American ones.

not all of them do, its how much money your district or funding source has to spend on books, some schools can afford nice text books because the area the school is in is nicer and the budget is higher and there are some areas where the population is poor and uneducated an the budget is usually smaller due to that

Probably because they are aiming at a reading population that uses expressions like “Suck so bad.” Poor choice of words and grammatically incorrect

RT’s stupid. It’s like one guys in my class’s view that nobody speaks french (which implies that a bunch of american french teachers invented the language with all it’s grammatical rules and such).

they suck because the books are based on the opinion of the author, the publisher is owned by the government, which is obviously based on deciet, pick up a history book lately?? misinformation.

Because, the texts have nothing to do with “teaching the test!” And you know exactly what I mean by that!

Ok, no offense (since you yourself are a teacher) but the reason is because textbooks are written by teachers.