Here’s one way to make a fast buck (actually a million): write a textbook, be hired by a public school board and insist that the board purchase nearly 50,000 copies of your book with federal funds. This is exactly what former Los Angeles math curriculum supervisor Matthias Vheru did, but now the jig is up and he’s facing prosecution.
Story from the San Luis Obispo Tribune and additional details from The Washington Post .
Link to article6 62562.htm
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/12
not necessarily evil
If he was the director of curriculum, and he designed a curriculum for which he had written the ideal textbook, and it was a good curriculum, then there’s nothing necessarily inappropriate about his actions (as long as he went for all the correct procedures a fact about which there appears to be some disagreement in the article).
In both high school and college, I had teachers and professors who was signed their own textbooks for class work. Why? Why not? If they were experts in their fields, and he designed a curriculum over a period of years, why not use the textbook tailored to that specific curriculum?
It doesn’t seem to me that this article carries enough information to know whether or not this man’s actions were unethical or pedagogically appropriate.