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Author Topic: Teacher Started Selling Ads on His Tests to Cover Printing Costs.. lols
Lanfear
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http://consumerist.com/5100958/teacher-sells-ads-on-tests-to-cover-printing-costs

I think this is epic. I'm not sure how I feel about it though.

[ December 03, 2008, 10:15 AM: Message edited by: Lanfear ]

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T:man
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It is EPIC, but more like EPIC FAIL!
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Christine
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I don't know what to think either. On the one hand, it's creative. On the other hand, it doesn't seem appropriate to use quizzes and tests to advertise. Then again, teachers haven't been given enough money to do their jobs for a long time so maybe it was only a matter of time before they started finding other ways.
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mr_porteiro_head
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It's not that big a step. Schools already sell advertising in their sports stadiums, cafeterias, and yearbooks.
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rivka
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I have very mixed feelings about this, both as a former teacher and as a parent.
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ketchupqueen
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quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
I have very mixed feelings about this, both as a former teacher and as a parent.

That, except not as a teacher.
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Lanfear
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I would purchase an ad as a student, and have it contain all the equations for the tests..
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Tante Shvester
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quote:
Originally posted by Lanfear:
I would purchase an ad as a student, and have it contain all the equations for the tests..

What if the class were graded on a curve? Would you have all the equations wrong?

quote:
From the article:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Left to fend for himself after budget cuts, His tests cost over $500 a year to print, but this year he only got $316, one calculus teacher resorted to selling ads on quizzes and tests to cover his printing costs. $10 for quizzes, $20 for tests, and $30 for a final.

Maybe he's giving too many tests and quizzes.
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dantesparadigm
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I don't know about that. When I took calc (no more math for me, I'm an English major) we had a quiz everyday, a test every two weeks or so and two finals (counting the mid-term).
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TL
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I'm of two minds about this. I'm totally against it in principle, but I realize the pragmatic value of it for this teacher. I think I would support it if the only ads sold were of the uplifiting-messages-from-parents variety. I really, really am against selling adspace on tests to companies. To me, that is pretty awful.

I have to wonder if the teacher really did this to stir up a controversy, some misguided attempt to cast the spotlight on his school's budget cuts. Faced with the same set of problems, I think most of us would have found a simpler solution -- like making one copy of the test and putting it on an overhead projector while the students write their answers on notebook paper. Given that there are maybe a handful of better and less controversial methods for solving his problem, I do wonder at his real motivation for doing this.

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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by Tante Shvester:

quote:
From the article:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Left to fend for himself after budget cuts, His tests cost over $500 a year to print, but this year he only got $316, one calculus teacher resorted to selling ads on quizzes and tests to cover his printing costs. $10 for quizzes, $20 for tests, and $30 for a final.

Maybe he's giving too many tests and quizzes.
It's possible. In that situation, I would simply refuse to spend my own money, and either the administration could pay the cost of the tests, or I would not give them. Simple.
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The Rabbit
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The gender discontinuity between the thread title and the article bothers me.
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Stephan
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quote:
Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:
Originally posted by Tante Shvester:

quote:
From the article:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Left to fend for himself after budget cuts, His tests cost over $500 a year to print, but this year he only got $316, one calculus teacher resorted to selling ads on quizzes and tests to cover his printing costs. $10 for quizzes, $20 for tests, and $30 for a final.

Maybe he's giving too many tests and quizzes.
It's possible. In that situation, I would simply refuse to spend my own money, and either the administration could pay the cost of the tests, or I would not give them. Simple.
Refusing admin in giving tests could get you in trouble. When I run out of my monthly allotment of paper I put classwork and test questions on the overhead and make the students copy it on their paper.
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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by TL:
I think I would support it if the only ads sold were of the uplifiting-messages-from-parents variety.

According to what I saw on the news this morning, that is what the ads are.
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Lanfear
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
The gender discontinuity between the thread title and the article bothers me.

Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. Sorry about that..
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Omega M.
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I thought this was going to link to an Onion article!

If I were a student of this teacher, I'd worry that the ads would distract me, no matter how understated they were.

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
Originally posted by TL:
I think I would support it if the only ads sold were of the uplifiting-messages-from-parents variety.

Are you similarly against commercial advertisements in school cafeterias, sports fields, yearbooks, etc.? Or perhaps do you think that being part of the actual academic portion of the school makes this substantively different from those?
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:
Originally posted by TL:
I think I would support it if the only ads sold were of the uplifiting-messages-from-parents variety.

According to what I saw on the news this morning, that is what the ads are.
Many of the newer ones. Not all of them -- note the one pictured in the article, and other examples cited in the article.
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
Or perhaps do you think that being part of the actual academic portion of the school makes this substantively different from those?

I certainly do.
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lobo
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
The gender discontinuity between the thread title and the article bothers me.

What gender discontinuity? I am lost...
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kmbboots
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Mostly I find it deplorable that a teacher (who is likely not making a fortune) has to pay for paper to give tests to his students. Where are our priorities?
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TL
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quote:
Are you similarly against commercial advertisements in school cafeterias, sports fields, yearbooks, etc.? Or perhaps do you think that being part of the actual academic portion of the school makes this substantively different from those?
I do think it is substantively different, yes. Absolutely. School sports and lunchtime are not learning endeavors.

Having said that, I don't like advertising in schools at all, even on sports fields and in cafeterias. I don't know if I would go so far as to say I'm against it, given the function I imagine it serves -- but I don't like it.

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lobo
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I don't like it that Apple attempts to force their inferior products on unsuspecting youths by donating to schools... It should be outlawed.
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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by Stephan:
]Refusing admin in giving tests could get you in trouble. When I run out of my monthly allotment of paper I put classwork and test questions on the overhead and make the students copy it on their paper.

My point was that if there was an administrative policy that required, even indirectly, that I spend my own money on work supplies, I would not comply, and if pressed, I would sue.
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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by lobo:
I don't like it that Apple attempts to force their inferior products on unsuspecting youths by donating to schools... It should be outlawed.

Good, yeah, outlaw charity if there is any chance of the party benefiting from the act. So, no tax write-offs, no Bill Gates foundation or Clinton Global Initiative, no Jerry telethon (not that I would miss it), and certainly no Apple giving people anything. God forbid those students should find a reason to use those inferior products when there are so much more user friendly and reliable alternatives out there, like windows Vista!

Oh wait, that's all idiotic.

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scifibum
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It would be wrong to demand teachers to provide supplies out of their own pockets.

I get the feeling though that teachers sometimes just find this more convenient than trying to figure out how to get by with the allotted materials. Is it really a sacrifice to ensure better learning, or is it a cost paid for the convenience of using as much paper as one wants? Probably some of both, in different proportions.

I think, though, that suing the school over not having enough paper would require one to show somehow that more paper is indispensable. When other teachers are using the overhead projector and having students use their own notebooks (students providing some paper for their assignments doesn't seem to be too controversial), it might be difficult to make that case.

I actually think the advertising is a clever, smart way to get some attention on the issue of whether the teacher gets enough supplies from the school. If so, the attention this garners should help to show it. If not, maybe this will lead to some effort to correct the problem.

Perhaps in lieu of advertising on the paper there's a business that will donate a printer and toner in return for a thank you plaque in the hallway.

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Belle
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quote:
Maybe he's giving too many tests and quizzes.
He's teaching calculus, he has probably in a typical high school six classes of about 30 students each - so let's say 175 students. If he gives three quizzes a week and the kids write on the quizzes, then he's going through 525 pages per week IF the quizzes only require one sheet of paper. Tests would most likely require more. Any notes, handouts, letters home to parents - that all takes paper too.

The teacher I observe with has to provide her own paper and is limited to how many copies she can use per year. She has to log on to the copier with a code and once her allotment of copies is up, that's it. No more copies. She said in a normal year she runs out before Spring Break. When her copies run out she either has to go to a copy store and pay for them herself or print them all out on her printer - for which she must purchase the ink.

She can use state provided money for her classroom to buy paper but this year she got $408 dollars for the whole year, and that had to cover all her supply needs - and because they added a new book to her requirements this year she had to spend a good portion of that on a class set of the new novel they are reading.

From that $408 she had to buy 35 novels, enough paper for the whole year's worth of copies, pens, pencils, Expo markers, tape, staples, etc. Anything else she needs for her classroom, like cleaning supplies or tissue comes out of her pocket.

So, even if he is giving a lot of quizzes and tests, I understand his frustration. We do not give teachers enough money for their supply needs. You can spend up to $250 of your own money and claim it on your taxes - but the teacher I observed with said she normally spends close to 3 times that in a given year.

Do I think it's a great idea to sell ads on tests - no I don't. However, I can understand that a teacher at the end of his rope and not knowing how in the world he was going to afford to continue buying paper and running off copies for his class felt he had little choice.

I'd like to hear alternative solutions - besides better funding for schools, because we'd ALL like that but it ain't happening anytime soon in this economy. Remember many schools are funded based on local property tax assessments and home values are falling in this market, not rising.

What's a teacher supposed to do? Continue spending his own pocket money to run off copies? Should paying $500 a year out of pocket just be considered "part of the job?" I'd like to know, since next year I will be in the same position.

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Belle
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quote:
It would be wrong to demand teachers to provide supplies out of their own pockets.

I get the feeling though that teachers sometimes just find this more convenient than trying to figure out how to get by with the allotted materials. Is it really a sacrifice to ensure better learning, or is it a cost paid for the convenience of using as much paper as one wants? Probably some of both, in different proportions.

I disagree with you completely. I don't think teachers run out of paper and copy allotments because they don't want to find a way to "get by." We always copy things double-sided to use as little paper as possible. With tests and in-class assignments, we never let the students write on them so we could take them back up and use them for the next class. That means only 33 copies rather than 175 are needed. When they had to read a short story that wasn't in their textbook, she pulled out copies of it from her files - she saves everything so she doesn't have to run it off again the next year - of course, then you have to start considering storage space - of which there definitely isn't enough. Student files were kept in a rolling cart she bought with her own money. Two tables in the room were provided by her, and her father built her bookshelf because she is prohibited from using state money on furniture, and the school only provided one small bookshelf that wasn't enough to hold the class set of dictionaries, much less the class sets of novels she is required to teach - and must have at least one full class set of if she teaches it - she cannot by school policy require students to purchase their own.

This is not an urban, inner city, or poverty-stricken school by the way. Middle class suburbia.

I did not see any paper sacrificed to "convenience." Students copying things from the overhead? Sure, but how much class time do you want to devote to that? It takes time for students to write things down, you know. That's time taken away from other teaching/learning activities.

Have a class website and tell students they can download it when they get home? Great idea - can't do it. You cannot assume that all students have equal access to computers and printers at home. By school policy we were prohibited from requiring students to download materials themselves.

It's not an easy solution, by any means. I can tell you though, having spent the last three years in various school districts observing and teaching, I've yet to meet a teacher who made all the copies she wanted to out of convenience. I've been in inner city schools, middle class suburbia schools, and upper class (VERY upper class, in fact) suburbia schools and in none of them did teachers have unlimited access to paper or copies. All of the teachers had to conserve paper, ration copies, and buy their own supplies much of the time.

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blindsay
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quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
I don't know what to think either. On the one hand, it's creative. On the other hand, it doesn't seem appropriate to use quizzes and tests to advertise. Then again, teachers haven't been given enough money to do their jobs for a long time so maybe it was only a matter of time before they started finding other ways.

I agree teachers are not given the money they need. Here in Las Vegas we have one of the largest school districts in the country. The school district receives more money per capita than almost any other school district in the nation.

That being said, we also have some of the lowest paid teachers and lowest test scores in the country. Our drop out rate is astronomical.

So where does all the money go? Well the new school district buildinghas expensive marble floors and a huge crystal chandelier. New high schools are built on a full square mile of property with a ton of palm trees that cost between $10,000-$20,000 each. I do not understand why we cannot build schools like in California which are built several stories up and take a lot less room.

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lobo
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"I do not understand why we cannot build schools like in California which are built several stories up and take a lot less room."

Here is Texas it is because we keep voting for school bonds. If we vote against them, we are voting against the children!

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FlyingCow
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quote:
When her copies run out she either has to go to a copy store and pay for them herself or print them all out on her printer - for which she must purchase the ink.
When I was teaching, it was around this time that phys ed, art, and shop teachers became very popular - they generally had a lot of copies left, and those copies were in high demand among math/science/english/social studies/music teachers.
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TL
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quote:
Students copying things from the overhead? Sure, but how much class time do you want to devote to that? It takes time for students to write things down, you know. That's time taken away from other teaching/learning activities.
I should think all they would have to write down would be the answers, and they were going to do that anyway..... Not sure why it would take any extra time at all.
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Dagonee
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In some ways I would really like to see all teachers stop providing extras - whether that be time or supplies. The motives in providing each of these are of the highest kind. But it enables a fundamentally dysfunctional system.

Policy requires insufficient bookshelves? Put them on the floor in a box. Policy allows insufficient copying? When the allotment runs out, nothing is done on paper any more. Impractical? Absolutely. But so is the current system, which takes horrible advantage of the fact that most teachers want to do a good job.

The downside is that it would cause large numbers of kids to suffer in their education. So it's probably not viable. But something needs to be done to stop society's systematic taking advantage of the good intentions of others.

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by TL:
quote:
Students copying things from the overhead? Sure, but how much class time do you want to devote to that? It takes time for students to write things down, you know. That's time taken away from other teaching/learning activities.
I should think all they would have to write down would be the answers, and they were going to do that anyway..... Not sure why it would take any extra time at all.
That really depends on the nature of the question/problem being posted and whether the intent is for the students to work the problem in class or as homework.

For most algebra and calculus problems, it takes more than one step to get the answer. Students would almost certainly have to copy the problem from the board or overhead before they began working it. In addition to the time lost copying the problem, you would have to figure out what to do about the students who copied the problem wrong, which will happen regularly.

There are different issues for questions in an English class. Teachers could easily write an essay question on the board but what if they are asking students to analyze a poem? I would personal find it a very significant draw back to analyze a poem if I didn't have a copy of it in hand.

I'm told its common to teach students grammar by having them mark the different parts of speed with colored pencils. That's not an activity students could do without having a copy of the sentence.

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scifibum
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Belle, that sounds like she was struggling due to some rather wacky policies. She was required to teach a certain novel but the novel came out of her discretionary classroom budget? Seems odd.

I wouldn't say we disagree, just that your example is one where the teacher's expenses were motivated more by desire to do a good job than by her own convenience - but not completely. For instance, having tissue in the room is a convenience, not a necessity.

I think there are other examples where convenience factors in a bit more, and quality of education a bit less.

My intent isn't to use the word "convenience" dismissively, by the way - inconvenience sucks. Like stacking files along the wall because you have no storage space for them...sucks. But doesn't really impact your teaching. I believe that it'd behoove us to fund our schools sufficiently both for quality education AND good working conditions for the staff.

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by Dagonee:
In some ways I would really like to see all teachers stop providing extras - whether that be time or supplies. The motives in providing each of these are of the highest kind. But it enables a fundamentally dysfunctional system.

Policy requires insufficient bookshelves? Put them on the floor in a box. Policy allows insufficient copying? When the allotment runs out, nothing is done on paper any more. Impractical? Absolutely. But so is the current system, which takes horrible advantage of the fact that most teachers want to do a good job.

The downside is that it would cause large numbers of kids to suffer in their education. So it's probably not viable. But something needs to be done to stop society's systematic taking advantage of the good intentions of others.

I understand and agree with your point, all sides of it. Most teachers teach because they value education. They are dedicated and willing to make personal sacrifices to improve the system. We need that kind of people teaching our kids. It a pity that the rest of society is willing to take advantage of their altruism. It's certainly part of why the turn over rate among teachers is so high. The good teachers burn out and either find another job or give up and become bad teachers.

Maybe if teachers cold organize a sort of "general work slow down". If they could across the board say -- "We are united and we are going to do anything that isn't expressly required by our contracts for the next month." They would unitedly stop taking work home, stop buying supplies for their class rooms, take home all the bookshelves and things they have donated to the classrooms and so on. Perhaps they could draw enough atttention to the problem to get action quickly without doing much damage to anyones education.

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by blindsay:
quote:
Originally posted by Christine:
I don't know what to think either. On the one hand, it's creative. On the other hand, it doesn't seem appropriate to use quizzes and tests to advertise. Then again, teachers haven't been given enough money to do their jobs for a long time so maybe it was only a matter of time before they started finding other ways.

I agree teachers are not given the money they need. Here in Las Vegas we have one of the largest school districts in the country. The school district receives more money per capita than almost any other school district in the nation.

That being said, we also have some of the lowest paid teachers and lowest test scores in the country. Our drop out rate is astronomical.

So where does all the money go? Well the new school district buildinghas expensive marble floors and a huge crystal chandelier. New high schools are built on a full square mile of property with a ton of palm trees that cost between $10,000-$20,000 each. I do not understand why we cannot build schools like in California which are built several stories up and take a lot less room.

I can't speak to the specific situation in Las Vegas but many school districts have no choice in these apparent spending disparities.

In many places, new buildings and facilities are paid for by bonds. Bonds are put directly to the voters and usually get approved but schools can't choose to spend that bond money to pay teachers or buy class room supplies -- it has to be spent on buildings. Teacher salaries and class room supplies are commonly specified from a mixture of state and local taxes. Unlike the bonds, those taxes get voted on by elected officials who are generally under pressure to keep taxes low. The average voter sees the direct line between the school bond and education but doesn't see the direct connection between taxes and schools because they go to a myriad of things and not just schools.

I think it might solve a lot of problems if our taxes were itemized. Rather than paying one income tax and one property tax, we'd pay a school tax, a law enforcement tax, a road tax and so on. Politicians would be required to spend all of the school tax on schools and all of the road tax on roads. If they wanted to cut taxes, they would have to cut the spending associated with that tax so it would be clear to people when they vote for a tax cut, that they were voting to cut spending on education or spending on roads or spending on defense or welfare or whatever. Right now there is a major disconnect between how Americans view taxes and what they expect from government. We need to find a way to fix that.

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Belle
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quote:
Belle, that sounds like she was struggling due to some rather wacky policies. She was required to teach a certain novel but the novel came out of her discretionary classroom budget? Seems odd.
That's the way it works. Novels are not the same as textbooks, which are purchased at the school board level and distributed to the schools. Novels are bought for the class by the individual teachers. The novel is determined based on the Course of Study at the state level, and at the local level some boards will mandate certain novels in certain grades. I don't understand your choice of wacky - if you're trying to imply that this particular school was unusual. It isn't. It's been that way at every school I've been in. Some English classes do get a separate allotment of money for books, especially the Honors/AP classes because they teach so many novels and works that are not in the textbooks. But once again, when that fund runs out (as it often does) the teacher spends his/her own money.

quote:
For instance, having tissue in the room is a convenience, not a necessity.

Oh, I disagree. Cold and flu season, kids sneezing and coughing - snot on their hands - tissue is a necessity. The only other option is to send them out of the room to the bathroom everytime they sneeze and that's disruptive and the kid misses classtime.

quote:
There are different issues for questions in an English class. Teachers could easily write an essay question on the board but what if they are asking students to analyze a poem? I would personal find it a very significant draw back to analyze a poem if I didn't have a copy of it in hand.

Good points. Also, writing essay questions on the board is discouraged, highly. If there is no written copy of the question, how do you prove to a principal or parent in a conference just exactly what you asked them?

Parent: You gave my son a bad grade on the essay test.
Teacher: Yes, he only gave me two examples from the text when the question asked for four.
Parent: Can I see the question?
Teacher: I don't have it. I wrote on the board and then erased it.

Not good. In my latest student teaching assignment, the vice principal in charge of curriculum told the English teachers that every student had to have a copy of essay assignments including the rubric that would be used to grade them. A copy they could keep - not just a copy given to them and taken back up.

For small assignments, sure. You can write things on the board and put them on the overhead. But for tests - anything that is a major grade - you have to have something concrete that you base that grade on, and you need to be able to show either a parent or your administration how you arrived at that grade.

quote:
My intent isn't to use the word "convenience" dismissively, by the way - inconvenience sucks. Like stacking files along the wall because you have no storage space for them...sucks. But doesn't really impact your teaching.
I understand. I don't completely disagree with everything you're saying either. And, had I not been teaching this entire semester and gotten some real-world experience to draw on I probably would have agreed wholeheartedly.

Thing is, though, I can't totally agree with you based on my experience. Files stacked against a wall? I would say it would impact my teaching. The files certainly couldn't be student files - those have to be kept somewhere the students can't access them and where some privacy is assured. So what would you have me stack against the walls? My files? The ones with all my lesson plans, materials, copies of tests, etc in them? Just stacked against the wall? Knowing that there is no wall space in my room where a student isn't within arm's length? So my students could grab a file full of last year's test (which I saved of course because I don't have enough money to run copies off again) and then distribute those tests around?

Teachers need filing cabinets. Not out of convenience, not out of a desire just to have things look neat, but because they have files they need to keep and they need to keep them secured.

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scifibum
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Belle, I do not want to quibble on the details, but I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of the restrictions/requirements you describe might be arbitrary to some degree. What I mean is that it might not be necessary to continue doing things the same way and it might be possible to eliminate some of those needs.

Part of what I'm saying comes from experience in a different industry. I know lots of people that buy themselves office supplies, supply materials for the team to use, donate their periodicals or books, take work home on the weekend, etc. I've done it myself. Generally I see expenses and effort that aren't required by the job but in some cases might make the job more pleasant, or just more personally satisfying for any reason whatsoever. People usually don't bother trying to get these expenses reimbursed because there isn't a strong enough business justification for them.

I can't imagine teachers are so different that they wouldn't, in a lot of cases, do the same thing: spend their own money to situate themselves or facilitate things they do according to their own preferences. There's nothing wrong with doing this, of course.

The problem is that such behavior might be difficult to separate from necessary spending. It is an unfortunate side effect of the good will that most teachers share, and their personal commitment to providing a good education. It would not be at all easy, from my perspective, for an auditor to classify personal expenses by teachers into necessary expenses and unnecessary ones. The teacher obviously can't have a blank check either.

If we are unfairly exploiting the good will of teachers then that must be brought into sharp focus. I think Rabbit's idea of a one month strike from any personal spending on the classroom or voluntary overtime is a brilliant suggestion. It would help to show the real extent to which we are hampering teachers in their jobs with insufficient materials, and how much their goodwill has been exploited to compensate.

It is also possible that for some subset, it might clarify the difference between necessity and personal preference.

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neo-dragon
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Frankly, I think that this (the ads on tests and quizes) is ingenious.

quote:
Have a class website and tell students they can download it when they get home? Great idea - can't do it. You cannot assume that all students have equal access to computers and printers at home. By school policy we were prohibited from requiring students to download materials themselves.

This is something that I've started doing this semester. There are no rules against it where I teach. Some students will come up with mostly lame excuses for not being able to print something off the site (it's amazing how inept the internet generation can suddenly become when you ask them to use a computer for school work rather than video games or myspace), but it generally works well because firstly, I only "require" them to get stuff off the site very rarely. Most of the stuff I upload are simply electronic versions of hand-outs that I gave them on paper, so that I don't have to make MORE copies if they lose something. Second, although you're absolutely right about not assuming that all students have the same computer/internet access at home, as I remind them, they all have equal access to the school library and computer labs. It's very inexpensive to print a few pages there.

[ December 03, 2008, 06:53 PM: Message edited by: neo-dragon ]

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Belle
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neo-dragon, you do bring up a good point. We also had "extra" copies for students who might claimed to lose something. We ran off enough copies for every student, and extra copies for students that were absent were kept in a folder with that student's name on them for when they got back to school.

Anyone who asked for another copy was directed to the website. I fully support using the web in this manner, but unfortunately we were not able to tell students that they had to download handouts and print them out themselves - we could only do it for replacements. Everyone had to be provided a hard copy first. I wasn't there when this policy was begun, but I heard from other teachers that it stemmed from a parent complaint that they didn't have the internet and couldn't be expected to download things. *shrug* Totally agree about the skills of the "internet generation" - I also witnessed a weird incident when seven printers all malfunctioned on the same night and those poor seven students, victims of this strange "Happening" couldn't turn in their papers. [Roll Eyes]

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neo-dragon
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quote:
Originally posted by Belle:
I also witnessed a weird incident when seven printers all malfunctioned on the same night and those poor seven students, victims of this strange "Happening" couldn't turn in their papers. [Roll Eyes]

Oh yeah, it's a given; no less than 1 in 10 printers break down the night before an assignment is due. [Dont Know]

But as I said above, why not direct the few students who really don't have internet access to the school library/computer labs? That's what they're there for. So long as students aren't expected to download material every single day, or to an extent where not being able to do it at home will make the course more difficult for them. Using the internet in this way can be a useful and economical tool, and I think that it's a shame that your school district took this tool away from teachers rather than trusting them not to abuse it.


*Edit to add
Ironically, I'm giving my kids a quiz tomorrow and to cut down on copying costs I've crammed the questions together so that there are three quizzes per page, and they will be instructed to answer on their own separate piece of paper.

63 quizes on 21 sheets... awesome. [Smile]

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scifibum
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"I also witnessed a weird incident when seven printers all malfunctioned on the same night and those poor seven students, victims of this strange "Happening" couldn't turn in their papers. [Roll Eyes]"

Whatever used to possess dogs and make them all hungry for paper at the same time has become the ghost in the print machine. :lol:

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scholarette
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The crazy thing is my printer does seem to know when I have a major assignment and dies. Of course, I know how to use several different printers and so if one dies, I find another. I would assume that its because I don't actually print things out often so I don't realize that the printer has actually been broken for a month, I just didn't realize it.

When I was in high school, I did not have a computer or internet. My parents could not afford it. The school computer labs were only available if your teacher signed up for the whole class. And the library did not allow internet or printing. So, it was a huge inconvenience for me when things were only available on the internet.

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