Selling your students

[jaehwan]

I read this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26idaho.html?hpw) in the Times today and blogged it here (http://www.bigwowo.com/2009/03/they-never-asked-me/). It's about a teacher who brokered a deal to allow a local pizza restaurant to put ads on the bottom of school photocopies in exchange for buying 10,000 sheets of paper. Kids studying their assignments now have to see pizza ads in order to pay for their education.

I'm horrified, horrified, horrified. Seems like everything is for sale these days.

[nskripchun]

^Sad... of course, it wouldn't be a problem if Federal and state governments actually funded their school systems properly.

For example, my home state of Washington is dead last on the West Coast for school funding (per student)! YEEEHAW!

[etain]

Was just about to play devil's advocate and say something similar. From my experience many schools allocate a paper quota to teachers on a quarterly/semesterly/yearly basis. If they exceed the paper quota... well, they're out. It's a pretty crappy way to get more paper, but as far as I can tell this teacher isn't getting any sort of personal compensation for this antic. If he/she is, then it's another story.

Not saying it's right, just saying there's a method behind the madness.