Xazy

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I find this an interesting way for schools to be able to pay their bills, and teachers not have to take money out of their pocket. The question for me is if we really open this door, where do we draw the line.

murp0434

this is a ridiculous example of underfunded schools. The answer is not advertisements on tests but reallocation of spent monies. If we stopped messing around spending billions in Iraq and even more on bridges to nowhere, unfinished highways, blackwater, etc. etc. then these poor kids wouldn't have to suffer this. Seriously what a prostitution of our educational system. It is absolutely unacceptable and should be illegal.

props to the teacher for creative fundraising,though

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genuinegirly

It shouldn't be necessary. But there you go. Nice way to bring attention to a funding issue.

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ngdawg

Maybe if school boards actually spent their tax dollars on the schools....
And I put some of the blame on teacher unions. They're strong lobbyists who get a lot of things for their members that most of us would kill for. Then when the boards have to make their budgets, where does it go? Free eyeglasses, fully paid for dental and health plans, pension plans....
This is not to say teachers don't deserve even more than what they make, because I think they do. But their pay scales, combined with tenure-related bennies, eats up budgets and then they end up having to do things like this.

In our state, the NJEA decided, and the legislature agreed, that "laypeople" would no longer be hired as classroom aides or teacher assistants. Districts had the option of grandfathering tenured employes.
This meant that either other teachers or people who got college certification as teacher aides(taking college classes and passing the state test) were the only choices.
Teachers in our particular district started out at about $25K a year with a Bachelor's degree. But aides started at just over $8 an hour-less than $10k a year. With the new ruling, those aides that couldn't be placed elsewhere were let go and replaced with mostly teachers, so salaries out of the budget more than doubled. And, of course, the coffers of the union got bigger since dues are based on salary. Nice, eh? Teachers were NOT happy, both those that got placed in classrooms as the aide and the teachers that got them because it became an attitude of competition.

All of this had the board of education scrambling to cut costs elsewhere. Teachers were already buying supplies. WTF? Back in the day, we looked forward to the little stack of school supplies we would find in our desks and the teachers didn't have to pay for any of it. From my kids' first day of school, we would get a list of what they had to bring, including crayons, markers, rulers, etc.-things that used to just "appear".
I was shocked at the end of my first year at the school where I worked when I saw garbage can after garbage can filled with text books-and probably the same textbooks kids were told they'd have to pay for if they didn't return them at year's end.

Is this teacher having to pay for his own test copies? That's nuts.


/me shakes her head at the stupidity of education....

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Nisses

Agreed word for word.

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Lasereth

This is awesome. Great idea!!

It is really stupid how much teachers have to spend out of their own pockets if they want to be a reasonable teacher.

skizziks

At least the teacher did something, as opposed to saying "Everything is fucked up, i'm just gonna sit back and do nothing. Fuck it, not my problem."

Kids are so bombarded with ads wherever they go, what´s a few more? I'm not saying the ads dont work, they do, hence the success of mcdonalds, nike, levis, coke, etc. But maybe, just like the banner ads i no longer see when i go to some sites, the overload will cause a blindness, and the kids wont notice the ads and the teachers will get money to teach.

snowy

The NJEA might have decided that in the end, but what caused it was probably No Child Left Behind. NCLB requires that "paraprofessional staff"--classroom aides--have at least a 2-year degree. They have to qualify as being "highly qualified" under NCLB.

School funding issues are different across the country, because state school funding models vary. In some states, education is a state constitutionally-protected right (like in Washington State). To that end, the state must always guarantee that a student can receive an education (and in WA they've defined this as extending to PE and the arts, so those programs can't be cut to save money). Some supplies are always guaranteed under that, but they are limited. In Oregon, supplies were cut out of the budget long ago. Education is not protected by the constitution here in any form, and various tax laws enacted by Oregon's populace (though one was overturned this fall) have made it hard to get funding for schools. When I moved here from Washington 13 years ago, one of the first things that struck me was that the school was still using a ditto machine, because teachers could make more copies on the ditto machine than the copy machine (the budget only allowed for x number of copies per year).


And ng, if you want to bring unions into this--there are other unions out there that demand higher pay for jobs that don't involve educating our children. I find it appalling that a guy putting together a car in Detroit makes more than a high school principal. I agree that tenure is not a good thing. It allows bad teachers to be protected, and often ties a principal's hands behind their back.

At any rate, I think it's sad that this teacher has to sell ad space on his tests, but on the other hand, I wonder if perhaps he ought to find another way to assess his students. I'm sure the fact that it's calculus limits his ability to get creative with assessment, but the possibility is still there. If he's been this creative with the idea to sell ad space, surely he can come up with another way to examine his students that does not involve photocopies.

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Cynthetiq

heck... my catholic grade school we used left over already been copied on one side paper for our tests in order to save money and paper. teachers paid for their own supplies.

I found it oddly strange to sit with my test turned over waiting to start the test reading something about business process printed on it.

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dc_dux

Its unfortunate to see it come to this, but not a surprise. Most state and local governments are suffering from the economic downtown as much as any sector.....and unlike the federal government, they cant deficit spend.

Add declining property values and declining property taxes as a result, and school systems, are taking a real hit.
-----Added 3/12/2008 at 12 : 29 : 42-----
While teachers buying supplies is nothing new, it occurs mostly in the poorer districts with lower property taxes, which are the primary source for school funding.

IMO, blaming the teachers unions, as was suggested in one post, is a bit of a cop-out.

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wolf

It's a sad day when schools have to resort to this. Our children are our biggest and most important resource. We're forcing teachers to find new and creative ways of finding ways of raising money for their school.

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