Why do US teachers have to ask parents to bring basic school supplies?
I've also seen US teachers spending hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to stock classrooms.
I spent a lot of time in European schools and I've never heard of teachers having to stock their own classrooms or fundraise for things like playgrounds, etc.
Our schools are generally underfunded and hardly anyone with any real power gives two shits.
Our schools are
generallypurposefully underfunded and hardlyanyoneany Conservative with any real power gives two shits, because indoctrination is more important than education to Conservatives.
There, now that's a much more correct statement rather than that both-sides bullcrap.
They're usually not underfunded. The funds just go to sports and admin salaries.
For universities, sure. But not for US public elementary and high schools. They're just poor.
as if they even give one shit
Conservatives, mostly.
Conservatives believe in neither education nor government. It's no surprise that when they have power, they fuck up both of those things.
Also racism. A common facet of conservatism. It's part of why conservatives don't like public programs- the wrong sort of people might benefit.
the conservative point ive been hearing is that government shouldn't spend money on education, because the real problem is fatherless households. im not really sure what to do with it
Make sure abortion is illegal so the number of fatherless households continues to increase, duh
That's a smoke screen. Another is the "liberal brainwashing machine" school system scare. What they fear is the statistic that higher educated individuals trend towards populism and progressivism. They see higher education of youths as a threat to their political base, which turns into "spineless parents sending kids to liberul brainwashing camps funded by the gubmnt."
Find out what they believe causes a household to be fatherless. Follow their logic string by asking follow-up questions based on their most recent response. Either they'll run out of justification quickly, or they'll back themselves into a corner. From here you can leave it be as they've essentially ended up causing them to question their own understanding.
One way of many.
I mean, if someone is saying that they're probably coming from an afactual, emotional, space, so you'd have to engage with those rules. Try to make them trust you and see you as part of their in-group, because if they see you as an outsider they're extremely unlikely to listen. This is true of everyone, but especially true if someone's emotionally invested in a topic.
Or they're a troll who knows what they're doing. Online trolls you can't really do much about. Real life trolls you can apply social pressure.
If you were going to try to engage that point on facts, which is probably a waste of time, I don't even know where to start. Are there statistics backing their claim or is it just made up entirely? Is it a dog whistle for racism? Have they read "The New Jim Crow"? Why does this problem preclude spending money on education? If fatherless households were a problem, should the government address that? How so? Would investing more in education be a long term solution to this problem, too?
There are so many questions. Most of which are likely to be wasted because the person holding this position is likely uninterested in facts, but has some feelings they're justifying with words.
Education is way undervalued. Teacher pay is horrible and the schools don't have enough funding for the number of students. So years ago they started putting more and more of the obligation on the parents (and, actually, on the teachers) to supply their own materials.
Schools in well funded states literally need like double what they're getting, and they need it yesterday.
Let alone worse funded states. Can't imagine what public education is like in rural Idaho.
Because education in the US is a fucking joke, just like everything else in this shithole country.
Edid: sorry i was in a shitty mood earlier lol
Don't apologize. This America isn't the same image our grandparents had of America. What we are seeing now are the deep rooted problems and the true America. Our country is a fucking joke.
It's the land of the fee
Tf happened in 1999?
Charter schools and public funding for private education started to be pushed heavily. And then Columbine happened, which made education a very public issue, so more money started getting shoveled at public ed.
The ghost of Reagan?
Many people here are talking about under-funding of education in the US. If you look at expenditure per student vs GDP per capita, the US is actually doing fairly well when compared to the rest of the world. Our problems aren't funding related (though I wouldn't argue against more funding). Our problems are allocation and priority related.
See here for data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country
I wonder if there are some holes in their methodology with regards to how people are paid in the US vs Europe. Like are they factoring in government benefits of teachers and staff that aren’t part of work like they are in the US. Salary and Benefits is a huge part of the cost, as well as land and construction costs.
That's true. They may not be factoring in government benefits. Things like universal health care.
I suspect it has more to do with the stark wealth differences in the US which are vastly higher than in Europe, especially because the above includes both public and private education. The US may spend a lot on the mean student, but not much on the median student.
I went to a really well-funded public school, and a lot of the rich parents in the area still sent their kids to private school, meaning they're basically paying for education twice. Rich American parents spend tons of money on their kids' education. It would be interesting to see a map of spending per student and see how it is in poor areas.
a lot of the rich parents in the area still sent their kids to private school, meaning they're basically paying for education twice
Not any more thanks to the Republican pushed school voucher system!
I think your last sentence touched on the real problem. Schools are funded based on local property taxes. So if you're in a poor area your schools are poor. It's like Jim Crow and segregaron but legal
The problem is multiplied by the fact that the people who are supposed to figure out how to be efficient with the money are either elected or paid way below market rate. So either way, they don't have the skills for it.
Because schools are underfunded as shit, thanks GOP, and not only do teachers spend a ton of their own time and money just to be underpaid, they’re not given adequate supplies for students. It’s especially bad for low income families that can’t afford to also pony up for supplies and activities.
Schools are sabotaged. They underfund the actual school so they can't afford common supplies like this, or repair their AC or building upkeep, etc. They vastly underpay teachers so there are fewer of them, increasing workload per teacher so there's more burnout and less effective teaching. They make wedge issues like the book bans, sex ed and anti-trans bills that prevent teachers teaching the obvious reality in order to increase anger at teachers to burn more out. They pass bills that allow people to take their taxes out of schools to move to other schools in richer areas or to keep if they homeschool (to indoctrinate).
They are the US republicans and the purpose of this is to ensure the most amount of poorer people are uneducated, don't get a chance to get higher education. Which leads to ensuring fewer have well-paying jobs, and more people live desperately and can't quit their jobs, move or exercise their right to assembly. This ensures a life-long near-slave caste of workers so billionaires have cheap labor and who are easily manipulated emotionally through fear keeping Republicans in power.
or to keep if they homeschool (to indoctrinate
I think you've got it mixed up. Public school is indoctrination. Homeschooling allows teachers/parents to teach kids how to think, not just regurgitate facts (and opinions masquerading as facts).
And I find it ironic that you blame Republicans for the poor public education in the country when California, one of the bluest states, has some of the worst public education in the country.
It's not a left vs right thing; it's a rich vs poor thing.
Edit: My humblest apologies, oh downvoters, for acknowledging reality. Just because you don't like a fact doesn't make it any less true.
I don't like it myself; I wish I could just blame it on Republicans and fight back by voting against them, but it isn't that simple. Rich people can afford private schools, so they don't care about public education, or they don't have kids, so they don't care about public education, and they have the money/power, so they decide the rules.
Them's the breaks, I'm afraid.
That's an ... Interesting methodology and take.
It wasn't always the case. Back when I was a kid, the school provided most things. Textbooks, crayons, paper, scissors, glue, etc. I had to bring myself, a pencil and eraser, and a notebook.
Somewhere along the line they figured out they could be pocketing that money instead of spending it on the kids, let the parents deal with the expenditures. Now you've got superintendents with quarter of a million dollar salary, over-budgeted construction projects that aren't always necessary (and they arent allowed to reallocate those funds elsewhere, so they just construct more bullshit), and they still find the time to screw over the teachers (who are making as much as a highly paid retail employee).
In Australia, for a public school student, the school provides a list of pencils, pens, glue etc the child will need for the year. You can choose to buy it from wherever but there are school suppliers that will provide everything in a pack for a fee and deliver it to your door.
There is no expectation that the teacher would pay for anything out of their pocket.
Because Jeff Bezos would rather buy a few more yachts.
This has been going on long before Bezos sold books out of his garage.
I'm in the US and we just provide a small fee and they provide the supplies. US every state and county is different.
Basically it is a way to provide unfair education. By forcing the student's parents to pay for as much as possible you are ensuring that only wealthy neighborhoods get good education.
In italy we bought everything outselves including books. Teachers never paid for anything.
Because Americans don’t want to pay taxes. A great majority think these things just magically appear, or that if you can’t afford it you don’t deserve it. “Socialism” is a dirty word in some circles and “the cruelty is the point” is their motto.
They are over qualified and underpaid. They are also underappreciated with who it matters, those that pay them.
They need to supply their ideas because they do it because they care. They have my upmost respect. Them and health care professionals work their asses off. At least with healthcare, they have decent paycheck.
In Australia, we get a stationery list at the beginning of each year. So many pens, pencils, a set of coloured pencils, this many lined exercise books, a ruler, erasers, an art book, a set of watercolour paint, etc. in some grades the kids (parents) leave these at home and the kid brings what they require when they run out. Other grades, the teacher takes them all and locks them in a cabinet, gives them out when required.
Some schools buy 47 (whatever) copies of Romeo and Juliet, Chemistry 1, To kill a mockingbird, Algebra and Geometry, etc, and loan them to the kids at the start of the year. You break it, you buy it. Other schools get you to buy your own books (they tell you which version of which books, and there are commercial bookstores that sell specifically to the school market), but have a school bookshop so you can sell it back at the end of the year, and buy next year’s books secondhand which another family sold. (Or buy new from bookstores mentioned above if there are no secondhand books available at the school bookstore).
The teachers still have to buy their own equipment: chalk, whiteboard markers, pens and pencils, but the stuff they buy is for their use. Some schools have laptops and smart whiteboards; these are provided by the school.
(My kids only went to public schools, I don’t know how private schools work).
It really doesn’t sound too different, but what where do you get wipes to clean everything the kids get their greasy hands on, paper towels, tissues for all the colds? How do you help the kids who always forgets his pencils or runs out of paper, or didn’t have enough notebooks.
A big expense that took the most personal time was classroom decoration, although maybe that’s more for the little kids. The school provides a concrete box with beige walls and desks. It’s a prison. A hopeless, tedious, boring prison. How can you not have places to highlight their work, education assisting devices, and even try to hold their attention and imagination? Are you really teaching g numbers without a number line, vocabulary without making words visible, geography without a map or globe?
Then the biggest expense my ex had as a teacher was stocking a classroom library. The school won’t pay for that because it’s not a direct part of the curriculum, but how can you not have one? How can you not try to gain the interest of any kid with a chance of reading? How can you not provide a reading opportunity to any kid with spare time or who finishes their work early!
Bait post so it fits right in here
Basically like most said, schools are woefully underfunded. Most often, they are mostly funded at the local level which screws them. Poor places have less money for school, thus making the cycle of poverty harder to break out of. Rich places have loads of money so intergenerational wealth persists. Medium income tend to fight any tax increase. (And if education matters to you, better to fight a tax increase and just send your kid to a private one)
Funding for schools here vary from state to state, but while there may be some amount of funding provided by the State and Federal government, most of the budget comes from the local governments, through property taxes. Where I live, school budgets are proposed by the school board but have to be voted on in the district that is being taxed.
There are a large number of people who are against all property taxes and reflexively vote down any increases. To be fair, those increases can be hard on retirees or other people on fixed incomes; even those whose houses are paid off would have to pay the tax. But districts with a lot of families tend to vote those budgets through, particularly if the overall tax per family is much less than the cost of private school.
I've lived here for 25 years, and my mortgage is almost paid off. But what I pay in all property taxes (not just School Taxes) is almost 2/3 of my monthly mortgage payment. When the kids are out of school, we'll probably move somewhere cheaper.
So you have to pay 2/3’s of a mortgage payment every year in taxes?
How much is your mortgage payment?
I know, crazy, huh? We bought the house quite a while ago, though. It's almost tripled in value in that time. My mortgage is based on my purchase price (refinanced when rates were super low, to boot), while the property taxes are based on a recent assesment. If I were to sell now, the new owner would likely get a much bigger mortgage, so their taxes would be a smaller proportion of the larger amount.
(I should add this is New York State, where property taxes are super high.)
My partner is a teacher and we spend around $200 a month just on snacks for their classroom (snacks have to be individually packaged, and there's 36 kids per class, so that's 72 snacks a day, Because the kids have a morning snack and an afternoon snack.) Even with donors, choose PTA and other groups. We just know that there's a certain amount of our income each month that's going to go too supporting her classroom. It sucks but we have accepted it, because by us not doing that the kids are just going to suffer.
I know that you probably get a tax deduction for it, but stories like these are still just crazy to me. These things should be taken care of by the school district, not the individual teachers. Wow.
It sounds like you're enabling the problem by continuing to spend the money.
What is "basic school supplies" for you? In Europe, there is a list of basic supplies students need and the displays show up in stores around July: things like pencils, pens, erasers, paper, binders, folders, punches, staplers/staples, paper clips, correction fluid... There's a lot
In Germany, generally, students are expected to bring their own stuff, it's not the school's/teacher's responsibility to provide pencils and what not. That's probably where the confusion lies, there is no scenario in which a teacher has to specifically ask parents to provide supplies because they do that anyway.
And Parents do get enough money to buy those supplies, if they don't provide their kids with it they might get in trouble.
That's what I meant in response to "ask parents to bring basic school supplies". "Ask" could also be covered in a list of suggested supplies. But, anyway, parents are providing those things, which counters the original question
Taking the opportunity to tell about https://www.donorschoose.org/
Local teachers asking for help buying supplies for classrooms. With prices and item lists so you know where it's going.
Also it's a great way to check out disparities in education. The low income school is asking for erasers and pencils and carpets for kids to sit on, and the rich school is asking to buy iPads to replace the old iPads.
Things like the fact that the way the state of Ohio decides the amount of funds allocated to the school districts being found unconstitutional in the 90s but them still using the exact same system to date is probably a large portion of it.
My mom had to drink puke on a radio show to buy my siblings and I school supplies.
bad ass
I'm addition to all the completely valid points about teachers being salary fucked, have you ever sat in a room full of kids with colds? The sniffling is brutal. It will grind your brain into sawdust. In an office you can pop earbuds in. Not so much in a classroom. Hence, every kiddo brings in tissues, and whatever, to save your sanity.
and then proceed to not even use them
shopping list: 3 notebooks actually ends up using a quarter of one