Teacher sells ads on exams.

[PhilK]

I saw this over on the Yahoo front page:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/educati...?se=yahoorefer

Ads on tests add up for teacher

By Greg Toppo and Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY

Tom Farber gives a lot of tests. He's a calculus teacher, after all.
So when administrators at Rancho Bernardo, his suburban San Diego high school, announced the district was cutting spending on supplies by nearly a third, Farber had a problem. At 3 cents a page, his tests would cost more than $500 a year. His copying budget: $316. But he wanted to give students enough practice for the big tests they'll face in the spring, such as the Advanced Placement exam.

"Tough times call for tough actions," he says. So he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final.

San Diego magazine and The San Diego Union-Tribune featured his plan just before Thanksgiving, and Farber came home from a few days out of town to 75 e-mail requests for ads. So far, he has collected $350. His semester final is sold out.

That worries Robert Weissman, managing director of Commercial Alert, a Washington-based non-profit that fights commercialization in school and elsewhere. If test-papers-as-billboards catches on, he says, schools in the grip of tough economic times could start relying on them to help the bottom line.

"The advertisers are paying for something, and it's access to kids," he says.

About two-thirds of Farber's ads are inspirational messages underwritten by parents. Others are ads for local businesses, such as two from a structural engineering firm and one from a dentist who urges students, "Brace Yourself for a Great Semester!"

Principal Paul Robinson says reaction has been "mixed," but he notes, "It's not like, 'This test is brought to you by McDonald's or Nike.' "

To Farber, 47, it's a logical solution: "We're expected to do more with less."

The National Education Association says teachers spend about $430 out of their pockets each year for school supplies. This semester, Christine Van Ruiten, a teacher at E.C. Reems, a charter school in East Oakland, has spent $2,000. She scours Craigslist for free supplies and posts requests to DonorsChoose.org, which matches teachers with donors.

Founded in 2000 by Charles Best, then a Bronx teacher, DonorsChoose has funded about 65,000 projects totaling $26 million. Best calls it "a more dignified, substantive alternative for teachers than selling candy door-to-door — and certainly than selling ad space on final exams. That's crazy."

Several things come to mind:

1.) I think it is a shame that a teacher has to resort to this type of thing due to budget cuts.

2.) I think it is awesome that the teacher "adapted and overcame" to ensure that his teaching method did not suffer due to budget issues.

I also don't really see a difference between this and selling ads for a student yearbook.

[JohnP]

This idea can be expanded to include unique statements from companies like McDonalds that state, "If you don't study, you could be working for us."

This teacher has a great idea and should be congradulated for his willingness to think "outside the box."

I can imagine this also turning into a nightmare where kids pay more attention to the ads and less to the test.

[PhilK]

I'm just waiting for the students to figure out that they can buy ads and maybe slip an answer in the phrase at the bottom.

[JohnP]

You, too, think outside the box, and in a most devious and dark intention. Were you an enlisted swine before you became a zero? )

[PhilK]

Originally Posted by JohnP

Were you an enlisted swine before you became a zero? )

I was PFC K, who was taught everything by Drill Sergeant (SFC) Smith and Drill Sergeant (SSG) Boone, before the pretty lights and loud noises drug me into the current dark side that I reside in.

But....don't underestimate the sneaky side of the Infantry Officer corps either.

[SlightlyCatholic]

The idea of not having enough school supplies is foreign to me, since I had twelve years of Catholic school. I always had enough and never really had a problem getting school supplies. My counterparts in public schools, however, weren't so lucky. One thing this article shows is that there isn't a whole lot of incentives to become a teacher these days. Years of schooling and student loans for a job that comes with a lot of hassles and misgivings. Yes, the pay is decent, but I'm not sure many people would even take the pay with the amount of BS that the average public school teacher has to put up with these days.

[HairyEyeball]

Not to downplay Farber's (wonder if we're related on my mother's side - that was her maiden name) ingenuity, but why is it that 'budget cuts' always seem to fall on the classroom and never on the legions of bureaucrats and 'administrators'? Why do they never fall on the fleets of buses chauffering kids anywhere from a few blocks to their neighborhood schools to 'neighborhood' schools on the other side of the city? How much of that 'budget' is earmarked for the tons of mind-numbing drugs prescribed for overdiagnosed 'syndromes' that are nothing more than the normal restlessness of bored kids?

Obviously, those are questions nobody is comfortable considering - or are they? Part of my platform this past election was addressing them, while one of my opponents advocated 'throwing more money at the problem and making it go away'. Could the fact that I out-polled him three to one mean anything?

[CAPSmith]

A recent communication with a friend of mine in Alabama, included an e-mail to the teachers of her school district. The e-mail stated that the district would be not be paying the teachers salaries until the next pay period because there wasn't any money in the account to do so. Pathetic.

The average teacher in her area makes $24,000 a year. Meanwhile, the football coach at the Univeristy of Alabama is raking in $3,750,000 a year. Is a football coach really worth 156 English teachers? I love football, but when all but about 8 colleges in the country lose money on their sports programs, it's time to re-evaluate.

Educational priorities in this country are backwards, the education of students has come second to creating the next NBA star.

[txb&b]

Originally Posted by Seminarian_Tim

The idea of not having enough school supplies is foreign to me, since I had twelve years of Catholic school.

Here's a little more insight for you about our public education system. In my area, it's not only the teachers that have to spend out-of-pocket for supplies. The same is expected (read required) from middle class and above parents so that the underpriviledged children can be furnished equal school supplies. Where I live, the majority of the "underpriviledged students" are children of illegal aliens.

[SlightlyCatholic]

Originally Posted by txb&b

Here's a little more insight for you about our public education system. In my area, it's not only the teachers that have to spend out-of-pocket for supplies. The same is expected (read required) from middle class and above parents so that the underpriviledged children can be furnished equal school supplies. Where I live, the majority of the "underpriviledged students" are children of illegal aliens.

My parents paid for public school students to go to school for all twelve years of my elementary, middle, and high school education (and they still pay). I never spent one day in a public school and yet they have to pay for other students' educations. Catholic school tuition isn't cheap, and regardless of whether we were rich enough to pay for it or not, that doesn't mean we had money trees that sprouted in our back yard when the tuition bill came in every year. The argument of "you can afford Catholic school, so that means you're rich; therefore, you shouldn't be complaining for funding public schools" doesn't hold in all cases and I've heard it too many times.