Asserts that the move to create more challenging textbooks abandons the lower-ability students, resulting in high dropout rates. Cautions that all students will not naturally gravitate toward higher academic levels simply because standards and expectations are upgraded. (MM)

For newly independent Central Asian republics a debate has arisen about how much of the aims, content and pedagogy of old Soviet-era curricula to retain, how much to revise or replace, and with what. There is a need to replace and revise textbooks, which are wearing out and outdated. Financial crisis has made the financial support of external…