Educational Research Analysts

How to interpret our textbook rating system

We try to help you choose the best book in each adoption, or at least avoid the worst. The terms "Best/Better/Fair/Poor/Worst" etc, compare books we reviewed relative to each other. We seldom use the term "Good" in our rankings. Often, "Better" means "worse than Good" and "Best" means merely "least bad." Sometimes a book labeled "Better," while superior to its competitors in that adoption, may in fact be poor based on our standard review criteria for the subject. Our standard review criteria let us rank submis­sions in absolute terms, and ensure consistent textbook comparisons in any one adoption plus a range of distinctions among the individual submissions. Yet they are works-in-progress, and hopefully expand and improve over time from one adoption to the next. To our know­ledge, we are the only Christian conservative group with many such criteria, which are indis­pens­able to having an impact. What might these criteria be? Here are some samples.