An Education Week Digital Education Blog is likely to cause some timber shaking in the education world. EdWeek says two individuals doing research on the real alignment between currently available textbooks and the Common Core State Standards say “Claims from publishers that traditional instructional materials are aligned to Common Core State Standards are largely a "sham."

Morgan Polikoff, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California and William Schmidt, the co-director of the education policy center at Michigan State University are extremely critical of the quality of supposedly Core-aligned printed texts.

Regarding materials supposedly aligned to the Common Core, Schmidt, who was named to the CCSS Math Feedback Workgroup in 2009, says "Don't spend your money until [instructional materials] arrive that actually fully line up."

So, maybe the Kentucky Legislature’s reluctance to spend a lot on textbooks has been a good idea, protecting unsuspecting school systems from buying the “wrong stuff.” It looks like there might not be much out there worth spending money on, at present.