[snarf21]

I say great for the teachers who found a way to make some well deserved extra money for all of their hard work.

The thing that makes no sense is the need for it in the first place. The constant changing of books for the curriculum forces everyone to reinvent the wheel for their lesson plans. So much wasted time and energy that the teachers could be spending actually helping children and being more satisfied. This isn't cutting edge ML research at MIT, it is helping 3rd graders learn about planets, etc.

Why isn't this done at the state level Department of Education? Here is the playbook, follow it and add/adjust as you need to based on your students. Huge time and money savings for all. This is easy to solve with some political will and give-a-shit.

[panzagl]

It's mostly driven by publishers who want to sell books every year instead of every decade. Add some academics looking to justify their existence plus upper administrators who are given big salaries to 'do something' to 'improve' education and you soon have a system that's very willing to slosh taxpayer money around.

[Florin_Andrei]

In other words, someone has a money incentive to change the game, and the power to do it, and we're all worse off as a result.