The monopoly of textbook companies

Now that I am retired I am thinking about publishing a full series of interactive high school math textbooks that are aligned to the new core curriculum standards.  As the primary author of one of the exemplary curricula I am thinking that doing them as interactive pdfs that can be printed or delivered as digital content and making them free or for small fee to schools, teachers and anyone else who might be interested. For too long the major textbook publishers have controlled the content that teachers deliver in their classrooms. Given that digital access is becoming less of an equity issue and that if all content was digital, schools would not need to purchase, warehouse and replace expensive texts. Consequently, providing every student with a laptop, netbook or tablet is less of a problem. An  iPad, net book or laptop can be purchased for less than the five to seven textbooks at $75 or more that a student needs every school year.

Are U.S. Math Students Just Average or Mediocre?

A new research study, Reassessing U.S. International Mathematics Performance: New Findings from the 2003 TIMSS and PISA, re-examines U.S. student's performance on international examinations by comparing their scores to the other 11 developed countries who participated at all three levels, 4th, 8th grades and 15-year-olds reports. Their findings show that within this group of these 11 countries, U.S. 4th graders where 8th overall and the other two groups were 9th.
There recommendations are to strengthen instructional in foundational skills, but can this be accomplished when far too many of the teachers teaching math do not have the "Profound Understanding of Fundamental mathematics (PUFM)" as reported by Liping Ma in her interesting book and a must read for every stakeholder in mathematics education, The Teaching and Learning of Elementary Mathematics?