of the textbook. By its very nature, however, a textbook alone is insufficient for helping students demonstrate proficiency in the Common Core standards. Mastering a standard requires students to engage with texts rich in thought and language—features a textbook lacks. A student can’t analyze where a textbook “leaves matters uncertain” (RL.11–12.1) or “analyze the author’s purpose” (RST. 11–12.6; NGA & CCSSO, 2010). The Integration of Knowledge and Ideas domain of the Reading anchor standards, requires working with ideas across multiple texts and different kinds of texts, which is something that textbooks, with their discrete chapters and sections, are not set up to do well. Textbooks lack the extended anchor texts students are expected to read in all content areas; many do not feature enough short excerpts of analytical writing that students will need exposure to in order to prepare for the PARCC, SBAC, and ACT assessments. Even if passages used in a textbook are rigorous, reliance on the instructional materials included with the selected text in the teacher’s edition of the textbook is likely to be insufficient in helping students demonstrate comprehension that is up to the expectation set by the standards.
