There’s something going on in California because my wife is an elementary school teacher and all her textbooks say “California edition” on the front cover.
The Texas Freedom Network which has been covering Texas schoolbooks forever (among other issues) says that modern printing technology has made other states less dependent on the weird thinking of the Texas State Board of Education. Of course, those other states need to care enough to order special editions.
So, it used to be worse. And some states have similar methods for picking textbooks–States Rights, folks!
Note that Texas districts have freedom in choosing texts. But if they want books not on the lists(s), they must buy them with their own funds. Of course, districts & teachers may supplement texts with other materials or classroom teaching.
In the California editions, Harriet Tubman won the Civil War single-handed, Eleanor Roosevelt was the first lesbian President, and George Washington is hailed as the Father of Medical Marijuana.
My understanding is that California history texts are required to have a certain amount of California-specific content. There’s some merit to the idea: history textbooks in general tend to focus on the English settlement of Virginia and New England and then proceed westward, essentially ignoring California’s existence prior to 1849. The reality is that the Spanish settlement of western America preceded English settlement. Many eastern Americans would be surprised to learn, for example, that Santa Fe, New Mexico was founded twenty years before Boston, Massachusetts.
If so, here’s a pro tip: When the gap between a poster’s sincere ideations and his attempt at self-parody is quite slight, as here, inserting a smiley-face is appropriate.